Thursday, May 19, 2022

to work!

The last few days are not a blur, they are full of rich memories. My kid graduated high school, and we threw a small party for him over the weekend.  The party was before the graduation, during the weekend. For some reason the graduation itself was on a Tuesday evening. It being Florida, maybe that was to avoid the heat, I dunno. 

       Everything but time to sleep worked out well. I've been only sleeping 5-6 hours a night for the past little while0, courtesy of Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife's new habit of complaining in her language in her sleep. It's too hot, too cold, honey stop breathing too loud, etc, and then at first light, a goddamn woodpecker has decided that it's fun to drum on my bathroom window, about 15ft from my bed, every 10 minutes or so. He's wary enough that he disappears when I pop my head outside with a .22, and ignores the usual scaring devices, a plastic owl, etc. I need to set up a blind next year and wait him out one morning, get me a nice new organic chew toy for the neighbor's dog.    

 So, not much sleep the past 10 days or so. Originally, I had a flight out and back to work after the graduation ceremonies, but that got cancelled so I had a 5am flight yesterday morning. 

 So, graduation wrapped up at about 8, then it was decided we'd go to dinner to celebrate more, as I was unexpectedly home, and my kid wanted Thai food, which is normally OK, but after getting into bed at about 11pm, I was up by 1:30 with cramps, and got back into bed about 0230. So waking up at 3 to get to the airport on time was lots of fun. Sleep debt caught up to me. 

     The flight and ride to Brooklyn was uneventful and I got onto the HQ about noon. I was on watch until 1730, whereupon I was able to unpack my stuff and wind down, finally getting to sleep about an hour later, and waking up 11 hours later with a backache because I'm 90% sure I didn't move an inch all night, just dead to the world.  I was lucky we didn't have a job on my first watch back. I was a zombie. 


 So, back to normal now and back to work. 


 

3 comments:

Rob said...

Having your child graduate from high school is a BIG moment in life! Congratulations!
You might give some thought to what that wood pecker is eating ... just saying.

Dave said...

Check for termites - woodpeckers hear the bugs and dig them out. There is something going on.

Paul, Dammit! said...

The woodpecker is drumming as a territorial marker to other woodpeckers in the area. They like the palm trees behind my house for the bugs. Tapping on a window, with the increased noise, increases their claimed territory.

My house, like all newer houses in S. FL, is concrete with a cement tile roof and steel truss beams, so I'm safe from termites. Just not safe from being able to sleep past 7am during the spring. One great annoyance is that some of the decorative trim on my house is expanded foam with a skim coat of mortar. The woodpeckers CAN peck out a nest in about 20 minutes, which I then have to fill in with lava rocks and mortar. Little shits. Only one so far this year. Last year I had 3.