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I often think about my sleeping habits. They’re not great, as the title of this post clearly states. I go to bed very late every night, & because of my little bean’s school schedule, my internal clock has already adjusted itself to wake roughly around the same time every single morning, no matter what. My internal clock even wakes me up minutes before my actual alarm clock screams at me to get up.
Yeah, even when I get sick, my body will wake up at the same time due to it being conditioned to my little bean’s repetitive school routine. I can’t even get myself to sleep in on the weekends; not even on holidays, or on vacations. Fuck me.
I don’t mind waking up early in the morning. One of my favorite things to do is lounge in bed for a little while before I get the day going. I don’t even mind the fact that my body is so accustomed to a routine that I cannot get myself to sleep in, no matter how hard I try. The only thing that really bothers me, to the point of pissing me off (pun intended), is that my body doesn’t just wake up because of repetitive routine. It is mostly because my very, very full bladder is my alarm clock, & roars at me to get up & urinate.
No matter how hard I try to convince myself to wait a minute, then another minute more, all I can think about is how my bladder will either explode like an overfilled water balloon, or I’m going to eventually give myself some sort of urinary tract infection. I can’t concentrate on anything other than voiding my bladder. By the time I finally muster the motivation to get out of bed to urinate, time has slipped through my metaphorical fingers, & I begin to rush to get my daughter dressed, fed, & ready for school drop off.
The evenings are a different story. I don’t rush to get in bed at night. I take my time to prepare things for the next day, such as picking out my little bean’s school outfit, pre-packing her lunch & the things she will bring to school, pre-prepping all the ingredients for breakfast, or picking out what I’m going to wear the next day so I won’t waste time thinking about what to wear (I can just grab the outfit I set aside & put it on without thinking about it.).
After everyone has showered (we’re all nighttime bathers) & brushed our teeth, & my little bean has read a bedtime book, after I’ve helped my mother with any extra task or favor she’s asked of me, that’s when I begin my wind-down process. I take time to do all of my skincare steps, I brush my hair, then I set up all the things around my side of whichever bed I am sleeping on.
Let me clarify this by explaining what that means. Basically, my little bean is a co-dependent sleeper & needs a parent to sleep next to her. Jian & I swap co-sleeping roles every other night, & depending on the situation, we trade beds (sometimes one of us will sleep in her full-size bed alone, sometimes she will sleep in that bed with a parent). This is a routine we have all gotten used to. Jian & I get to share a bed on the weekends, when the little bean sleeps with her grandma (as a weekend treat). Grandma has no rules, so on the weekends the little bean will sometimes stay up until 1am watching random videos of raccoons eating trash food.
So, to get back on topic, after everyone else has been tucked in bed, that’s when it’s my time to properly shine relax. I put on my ear buds, watch a ton of Instagram reels before switching to YouTube shorts, play a couple rounds of whatever puzzle game I’m into at the moment, maybe color a few pictures from my color-by-numbers app, pinboard aspirational photos on Pinterest, then freak out about how late the time is. After all of that bullshit, I put down my phone, put away the ear buds that are starting to make my ears feel tender & sore, then try to fall asleep, all while trying to convince myself that I don’t have to pee one more time before sleeping. (That always fails, & I end up making a big fuss with myself just to unburden my bladder for the night.)
Oh, you thought I was done? No way, José, & that includes you all the way in the back row. I am still not done. What’s that old saying, “First one up, last one sleeping”? Or was it “First one in, last one out”? Either way, I am always the last person to sleep in my household. I am making sure everyone is taken care of before I ca truly fall sleep, & that mostly applies to my little bean. I make sure she is covered properly, that she’s got all of her favorite things to sleep with right next to her, & that she is fully asleep before I doze off.
So, this is where I end my post. I am going to sign off, take a whizz, then go to sleep at a relatively decent time for once. Cheers.
Song of the day:
I was listening to the song “Your Side of Town” by The Killers on the radio today, and it very much reminded me of a close friend of mine who has the same tastes in western music as I do. The style of this song got me reminiscing about the kind of music each of us used to listen to when we were in high school…or maybe even younger.
I was listening to this song, bopping along in my car, and my mind started imagining and making up a story/scenario. I was imagining my friend being back in high school, but the whole tone had a John Hughes (a classic 1980s movie director, if you didn’t know) vibe. I was picturing my friend standing against the wall on the side of the school, wearing skinny-ish jeans & a slouchy blazer with a collared shirt & skinny tie, trying to flirt with girls while feeling super angst and moody.
That got my mind drifting and wandering even more, & as I parked my car in my driveway, I stopped my imaginary stories. I suddenly realized, while also talking to myself aloud in the car, that I love my imagination. I love the way my mind drifts & I can invent wild & fanciful stories that I can picture to myself so vividly.
I have always been a kid who can make up stories with my own imagination, on the spot. I rarely write them down, but I often remember stories I’ve thought of years ago. Sometimes I will go back to one of my old imaginings & reimagine the whole scenario with added embellishments, or to fit the current time. Other times, I will think back on an old story I made up just to reminisce about that scenario I once thought of.
No matter how old I get, I will never stop imagining stories or daydream in my mind. I love every one of my made up stories. They are little scenes just for me, and they make me so happy. Cheers.
Well, I didn’t get to write that epic Japan travel recap blog that I promised to post here. 2023 has already come & gone, & we are officially two & a half weeks into 2024. On the same day that we flew home from Japan, Jian had to fly right back out for a crucial work trip in Los Angeles. He barely had time to shower & eat lunch before he was rushing back to the airport. I, on the other hand, got pretty sick from the jet lag when we got back. I mean, the jet lag knocked me on my ass for nearly a week. At least we weren’t planning on going anywhere special for the Thanksgiving holiday, so that was a bonus…but my brother was going to be staying with us for a week, which means I barely had time after recovering from jet lag to get the house guest-ready.
The first half of November will go down as one of my all-time core memories. Our little trio had the best time in Japan, & hopefully I can recap everything for this blog site in a different post. All I can say for now is that I cannot wait to take our little bean back to the land of the rising sun again. It was an absolute blast getting to reconnect with my fraternal cousins & hang out with old friends again. I was definitely surprised how well our little bean was able to adapt to such a head-turning new environment. Stay tuned for a slightly more in-depth post in the near future.
The latter half of November flew by in a blur. Then our little trio embarked on a new journey. We were sending our little bean off to preschool for the first time! We were both excited & nervous at the same time, but no one was more nervous than me. I was feeling major separation anxiety, & if you have been following my blog for quite some time, you’ll already know I have a moderate fear of things changing, especially with major life milestones, hence my love of routines & steady habits. Sending the little bean off to preschool wasn’t nearly as scary as I had thought it would be, but you know I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t do a little freak out session in my head first.
Pretty much the whole month of December was spent being on-again-off-again sick. It was either myself or the little bean being sick, & by sick I mean a small variety of illnesses such as: allergies, cold, flu, etcetera. Our best friends, who already send their little one to daycare, already warned us countless times about how our little bean will be bringing home some sort of virus or germs from school every other week, but surprisingly, she hasn’t gotten sick from anyone at school yet. *KNOCK ON WOOD* We’ve just been passing around the everyday seasonal virus or germs between our little household. Every other week at least one person in our household has a runny nose or a scratch throat, but nothing too serious like the big C-word. *KNOCK ON WOOD, AGAIN*
Our Christmas holiday this year was better than previous years. For the first time in a long time my sister & our brother (her fully-related brother, also my half-brother) weren’t at each other’s throats or fighting like cats & dogs. It was kind of a relaxing & peaceful time. The only mishaps that happened were when a couple of sentimental tree ornaments got broken & my niece passed her cold virus to me & my little bean. Other than that, we had a pretty uneventful month, & nothing significant happened. Uh, well, maybe I should mention that this past week I check into the Urgent Care ward at the hospital to treat a severe case nausea & vomiting. After getting checked out by the doctor, I was cleared to recover at home. It is safe to say that I am now back to good health other than a slight case of the sniffles, but we’ve been having a cold weather front recently, so that might be what’s prolonging my runny nose.
This year, in 2024, I have absolutely no resolutions whatsoever. Zero. I do not need to make any resolutions. I am just going to keep on doing what I need to do & what I want to do from here on out. I don’t need to make any special promises or goals. My goals are just ordinary life milestones that should & will be happening naturally on their own anyway. I don’t need to declare a resolution to make those life goals happen. So that is all I am going to say about that. Until the next post, cheers to everyone in 2024!
Today’s song of the day:
Rabbits & Foxes 
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