The Best Laid Plans

So I haven't been sleeping lately. Something about the stresses associated with living a life, working and caring about and for lots and lots of people - blah, blah, blah. My problems really are few, and I have little to complain about which makes this post all the more obnoxious. I'm going to bitch about not sleeping, and I know there are people reading this that are thinking - Jesus H. Christ! If she only had my problems for a day... I know, I get it. But because I have a pretty good life in the grand scheme of things, I have to bitch about a lack of sleep because THAT is having the greatest impact on my ability to function.

Some background - my job has 2 focus areas. One of them requires multiple (a minimum of 4) hours of uniterrupted time to do paperwork that must be done precisely and in a specific order. The other requires me to answer questions coming in from meetings, voicemail, email, instant message, and an on-line tool. The questions that come in require anywhere from 2 minutes to weeks of investigation to answer. They must be acknowledged as having been recieved, if not answered immediately.

What this causes is questions coming in all day, though sometimes not at all, but a lack of dedicated time during business hours that stretch from Bangalore to Seattle. This leaves a tiny slice of time from 10PM - 2AM during which my house is asleep, and the people of Bangalore are not yet on line. That is when I have been doing the uninterruptable part of my job. Of course, I also perform at least 8 hours a day on the other part of my job, so you see the dilema. For the past three weeks I have been staying up and getting maybe 5 hours of sleep a night. This has taken its toll on my weight loss and healthy eating, my relationship with The Dude and The Boys, and made me into a baggy eyed zombie. I've been downing a half a pot of Pete's coffee a day just to get going, and I'm unwilling to take anything else to do so.

This week I decided I was going to get at least one good night's sleep. That was supposed to be last night. I was in bed by 10:12, and fell asleep right away. At midnight, The Youngest woke me up to tell me he was going to the bathroom. At 4:00, the cat needed to go out and proceeded to march across my face until I got up to let her out. At 5:00, The Oldest woke up from a bad dream and climbed in bed. I kicked him back to his bed at 5:30 because none of us were sleeping. At 6:00, The Youngest was up again and climbed in bed. At least he fell back asleep pretty quickly, so I could too. At 7:00 the alarm went off and we were up and running for the day.

I'm going to try again tonight, but if not, I won't have another opportunity for at least a week because with 2 days of NO time on the uninterruptable part of my job, I'll have to get caught up. As I sit here at 9:45 ensuring The Oldest completes his homework, and I AM tired. I WANT to go to bed. I can hear it calling me...