If you know me well, you know on my planet the day is 36 hours long. Thus creating an optimal sleep cycle of 10 hours and then 26 hours of work, play, and so forth. Well, here on fucking Earth, your day is 24 hours long, thus creating a gradually progressing state of sleeplessness and insanity. At least for me.

As you also know recent events have found me jobless for the first time in 11 or so years (you can barely count that brief stint after TPM). So, without much obligation to live by the 24 hour clock, I’ve fallen into my normal and natural schedule. I feel rested and great. My family is annoyed and hating me, however (sorry). Now with another job on the horizon, it is time to get back on the oh so wonderful 24 hour schedule and try blending in with you Earthlings again.

Plan A: Follow my normal schedule into slumber, and then mentally wrestle myself out of bed at a more Earthly acceptable hour.

Result A: Went to bed at 0400. Woke my wife up. Not because I’m a bull in a china shop. More because she sleeps like a restless barbarian being hunted by witches. I think the sound of me thinking about not waking her up actually woke her up. So, she’s awake for the next couple hours till the alarm goes off. The “more Earthly acceptable hour” strikes, and my mind wrestles my sleeplessness like a chihuahua trying to move a mountain. This happens 15 more times as I unconsciously hit snooze and my alarm finally gives up trying. I wake at 1030. I’m calling this one a huge failure.

Plan B: Follow my normal schedule into slumber, sleep on couch, then let the noise of my wife getting ready and my son wrestle me out of slumber.

Result B (Part 1): I gathered all the supplies I’d need for my living room camping adventure. Except a toothbrush of course. Thankfully, my wife has stocked our guest bath with the necessities. It’s 0400 and I’m getting tired again… At least enough to force myself into sleep. Time to shower and hit the sack. Into the guest bath to shower. It has a shower curtain. I mumble to myself about how I hate shower curtains and crank it up to get the room steamed up. While I’m brushing my teeth and all that fun stuff, I notice that my feet feel wet. When I move to check out this curiosity, there is a very audible “SQUISH”. My contacts are out by this point, so instead of visually inspecting what has happened, I have to inspect it like the answer is written in Braille on the linoleum floor. Nice. About a half inch of water. Obviously this is coming from the shower. I crank this off, and remedy the situation with towels and such. Seems the shower head was cranked in just the right position to slip through a crack and soak the floor in record time.

Then I get in the shower and discover that there is so much calcium and what not from non-usage that the jets are nearly 100% plugged. The jets that are not plugged are shooting water at such a speed you could cut fish. Needless to say, this is most unpleasant. What to do? It’s 0415 and I need to try to get a nap in, so I just brave it. I wont go into detail, but when one of those jets hits sensitive parts of your body you tend to scream a little bit. NOT a fun shower. On the bright side, the weapon-like streams of water occupied my mind enough that I barely noticed that wonderful phenomenon where the cooler air from outside the shower tries to rush in the lower part of the shower as the hot air escapes over the top. We’re all familiar with the Convex Shower Curtain Phenomenon, right? Maybe if I had more than 1 ft of space in the shower I could have better evaded those damn jets.

After I’m done showering and checking for wounds, I inspect the shower head. It’s caked over something fierce. I scratch a fingernail across one of the jets, and notice a small particle pops loose and the jet looks normal now. I do this to all the other jets with the same result. I crank the shower on to check it, and viola! Fixed! We’ll file that one away under Things That Could Have Been Useful Five Minutes Ago.

So, the mats are hung now, the floor is dry, most of the major wounds have stopped bleeding, and I’m ready to go to bed. It is now 0445 and I’m seriously contemplating just staying up and pulling an all-nighter.

… To Be Continued