Monthly Archives: September 2010

Can’t Sleep, Everything Will Eat Me

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Sleeping doesn’t always come easy for me.  I have a really flexible schedule the past few months, and that’s really chipped away at all my routines that I used to have.  Previously, I was always exhausted and in bed by eleven and awake by seven.  Boring, predictable yet effective.  Now that I don’t have to wake up for the regular 9-5 grind, I go to sleep whenever.  At first, I felt like a badass kid who was like “hehehe, look at me, I can stay up till midnight!” But as the lack of a cohesive schedule continued on, I found myself going to bed later and later, sometimes not until 3.  I don’t necessarily like it, but I’m just not tired.  Sleeping till noon doesn’t help.

www.toothpastefordinner.com

I wanted to sleep.  Nothing good happens that late at night, awake all alone.  I started taking sleeping pills to help me get to bed and I got hooked.  The lame part?  They weren’t even some boss prescription pills that I could totally walrus out with.  No, just Unisom, available at any local drugstore.  Somewhere inside me, though, I knew it still probably wasn’t a great idea that I needed pills every night to get to sleep so I’ve weened myself off of them.  Two weeks strong with no sleeping pills and I feel better than ever?  Not exactly, but I am definitely waking up when the clock still says AM.

Another thing that prevents me from sleeping is the very name of this blog.  I love it and hate it.  Getting all jacked up in the evening makes me very productive, yes.  But then when I lay down in bed at 3 in the morning counting my heartbeats, I start to have second thoughts about that latte at 9 PM. 

PLEASE DON’T ABDUCT ME

In order to try to relax in the evening, way after my boyfriend has gone to bed and it is late, I try to read to get myself into a state where I can fall asleep.  This doesn’t work out the best way if your favorite author is Stephen King.  One night, I was taking a hot shower to try and loosen up before turning in, and my mind started to wander and I couldn’t stop thinking about that short story with the finger that starts to come out of the drain.  It is so easy to freak yourself out at night.  I’ll think of awful terrible things that keep me awake.  The two most horrifying to me being ghosts and aliens.  Though I’ve tried to assure myself time and time again that this apartment is NOT haunted (since we are the first tenants to live here!), my brain fights me and says “well what if ghosts followed you from somewhere else?  What if this land was built on hallowed grounds and the spirits are restless and are going to try to steal your soul as retribution?”  Then I keep imagining that there’s aliens outside and they are going to bust in here and abduct my ass.  It’s scary to think of those big-headed creepos outside on my balcony with their long fingers, all eyes and no face, just waiting to take me to their ship and probe the hell out of me.  No thanks.

HAVE A GOOD TIME NOT SLEEPING.  EVER AGAIN.

Let’s say I don’t think about horrible things like ghosts, aliens and republicans and somehow I get to sleep and I am all sound and snuggled in bed.  Things wake me up!  I think I have some kind of version of night terrors.  The scene is this:  I’m sleeping, and I wake up for half a second to turn over but OH MY GOD LOOK ABOVE YOU, SPIDERS!  THERE ARE GIANT SPIDERS ON THE WALL AND SOME ON THE BED AND HEADBOARD AND YOU BETTER JUMP OUT OF BED, START SCREAMING, THROW OFF ALL THE BLANKETS AND LINENS AND FREAK OUT AND SHAKE YOUR BOYFRIEND AWAKE BECAUSE YOU DON’T WANT SPIDERS ON HIM EITHER, DO YOU?  This happens regularly.  My boyfriend is a really deep sleeper and he won’t wake up for any of these shennanigans, no matter how much I shake him. By the time I have all the lights on, have thrown all the covers and pillows off my side of the bed and am frantically trying to wake sleeping beauty on the other side of the bed, I can see there’s no spiders and I’m doing that thing again.  I’ve gotten to the point now when I wake up with my heart racing seeing imaginary spiders, in a few seconds I can calm myself, focus and not do any of the freaking out by telling myself “those are not real, they are never real, just turn on a light and see then you can go back to sleep.” 

These are the things that keep me up at night.  I sound like a weirdo.

Just Have Some Toast.

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“Just have some toast, please!”

I can still hear my dad saying that to me.  He was always very big on the “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” idea, and I was always in the camp of “I’d rather sleep than eat.”  He would yell at me in the morning as I was dashing out the door to just barely make it to school on time “PLEASE! BREAKFAST! AT LEAST SOME TOAST!”  I’d end up eating breakfast later, as I’d grab a bagel and Snapple on the way to school and eat it in first period band.

Eating in the morning is a chore.  A horrible chore that makes me nauseous.  I never understand people who wake up hungry.  Like you JUST WOKE UP how can you want to shove food in your gullet?  You didn’t even do anything to get hungry yet! Give me an hour, maybe I’ll have a yogurt and a fruit, but damn.  I’d rather use the time in the morning to sleep an extra few minutes than have a nutritious breakfast to start my day.

Jersey Breakfast.  No egg for me, please.

Another thing, I hate breakfast food and always have.  I do not like eggs, oatmeal, most cereals, porridge, fucking none of that.  I like only few cereals, and I’m mostly lactose intolerant.  I’m a fucking asshole and hate my body though, so I still drink milk and then cry when I have stomach cramps later.  Things I DO like for breakfast aren’t healthy.  French toast, pancakes, bacon, goopy fruit that goes on those things, taylor ham on a roll (If you don’t know what taylor ham or pork roll is, that’s ok – it’s mostly a Jersey thing)

When I have to be up all day and do things, as a part of a new healthy lifestyle, I’ve begrudgingly started eating breakfast.  Here are my go-to breakfasts:

  • Kashi Go Lean Honey Almond Flax cereal
  • Green Smoothie (spinach, milk, flax, banana and berries)
  • Yogurt parfait (vanilla yogurt, Smart Start cereal, berries)
  • Carnation Instant Breakfast (you’ll love it in an instant!)
  • Coffee with everything.  Coffee is so great and I love it.

When I was still getting up for work (oh hey, did you know I’m unemployed?  Let’s call me a Full-Time blogger/twitter jockey), I would get breakfast FOR FREE from the lobby of my apartment building.  My boyfriend and I live in a super sweet place that has a lot of PHAT amenities.   Yeah, I just said phat, perhaps I will bring it back.  Anyways, in the morning until 9:30, you can get oatmeal, fruit, muffins and yogurt ALL FOR FREE.  Along with the coffee and tea you can get daily until midnight.  So when I was being healthy and on-track, I’d grab a piece of fruit and a yogurt and a cup of coffee and I’d eat that when I got to work.  My coffee would be nice and hot, and I would drink that when I got about 12 miles away from home (I had a long commute).  When I was less-healthy, I’d grab a giant cheesecakey muffin.  At work, I’d share the bottom of the muffin with the dog. (THERE WAS A DOG IN MY OFFICE. AND I FED IT, SUCK ON THAT, OLD BOSS I FED YOUR DOG ALL THE DAMN TIME EVEN THOUGH YOU SAID NOT TO ASSHOLE)

Sleep till noon in a tiara. Don’t eat breakfast

Now I have found a way to still be healthy and not eat breakfast.  I just sleep till noon.  Then I have lunch in an hour.

But seriously… In an effort to try to have some kind of breakfast shit in my life, my twitter friend, @CarlaNordbrook sent me a sample of Shakeology in chocolate flavor.  I’m usually not in favor of diets that replace meals with some kind of shake or bar, but if it is one meal a day, and that meal is breakfast, count me the fuck in.  Shakeology is full of healthy things, lots of stuff from chia to flax and all kinds of ridiculously healthy stuff.  I can’t even get into it, look at the website – It’s full of nurtitions.  The taste is pretty good.  I made the mocha recipe which calls for 1 cup of cold coffee (I brewed my favorite, chocolate raspberry flavor), 1/2 cup milk, the shake mix and ice.  It tasted ok.  No weird diet-y or healthy tastes.  With all those nutrients and healthy things in it, I expected it to taste like vitamins and pond silt.  But it did not taste like either of those.  Would I buy it?  I would try it out for a month.  I’m not completely sold on it though.  Sure it is healthy, but I can buy Carnation Instant Breakfast at the store… But it’s an hour later, I’m not hungry at all so this thing IS satisfying.  So my verdict is that if I had some extra money hanging around right now, I’d probably buy some and try it out and see how it works.  Everything I do is an experiment anyways.

My review of Shakeology: NOT TOO BAD! Would buy some!  If you would like to buy some, go here and buy it.
(I do not have a formal rating system yet.  I think it ranges on a scale of THIS FUCKING BLOWS GIANT DONKEY DONG to THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME.  I will let you know when the scientific method behind my rating system is complete. Give me more shit to review and I’ll let you know.)

Things My Boyfriend Says

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It should go without saying that I love my boyfriend.  Mike is wonderful.  He gets me, most of the time, and we both have a lot of the same strange things in common.  This isn’t a post about why I love him, though.  That’s private.  As smart and wonderful as he is, sometimes he says weird things that I do not understand.  Or sometimes he says funny and terrible things that are awesome.  I feel like Things My BF Says could be a regular feature.

so…. thirsty….

The other day, I was pouring a glass of water and he sees me and calls out “DON’T DRINK ALL THE WATER!” I was getting water from the Brita pitcher, which is filtered tap water.  We’re not going to run out.  The water comes from the sink.  If I do “drink all the water” from the pitcher, no one has to carry two buckets on a stick down to the well.  It’s right there.

Power Struggle

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One afternoon last week, the power went out.  Even though it was the afternoon, I was just starting my day.  I had just poured a bowl of cereal, sat down on the couch and grabbed the remote to watch some TV while I scarf down my Kashi rocks.  The second I sat down, BeeezOoOOOp everything goes off (that is the sound of everything turning off at once).  Now what, I thought?

Kashi is very loud when there is nothing else going on to distract you from the health nuggets grinding around in your face hole.

After I ate my cereal I thought “well, I can go to the gym.”  No, I can’t, because it’s in the same building and the power is going to be out there too and the machines won’t work.  I go through a mental list of things I don’t do often and can now catch up on since I won’t have the TV or internet distracting me. These include:

  • Play Wii (can’t.)
  • Play Playstation (still no)
  • Internet (still no, stupid.)
  • Go somewhere else?
Play a little Enya while you’re at it.

In order to go somewhere else, I’d need to shower first.  There’s no window in my bathroom.  I set up a stool with a bunch of candles on it and took a shower by candlelight.   Sounds romantic, right?  It was actually kind of nice, I’m not going to lie.  It made it more relaxing and like a little treat.  I keep my candle stool in there now to do this more often.  Sounds dumb, but it’s just a little thing to make my day feel a little more indulgent. 

By the time I got out of the shower, the power was back on and I could go back to procrastination as usual.  The power was out for 40 minutes max, but it felt like eternity.  I live in SOCIETY and expect things like electricity, running water and mindless entertainment. For those 40 minutes, I might as well have lived in a shack in the mountains.  This is why I will never go camping.

New Direction and My Best Good Friend

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I’ve changed this blog’s name to Night Caffeine and I will write about more topics than just cooking and my struggles being a fatty trying to lose weight.  I’m sure I’ll still bitch about those things often enough too, because damn…

Why “Night Caffeine?”  I’m bad at thinking up things, and the only time I get all jacked up to do anything is when I drink a bunch of coffee in the evening, stay up stupid late and get a lot of ideas for ridiculous things.  Night caffeine is so awesome.  Getting coffee at 9:00 PM seems like a bad idea, because there is no discernible time when I will fall asleep, however FREE COFFEE!  I had a coupon for Quick Chek Harvest Spice coffee.  You’d think I’d go have some coffee during the daytime when I’m draggin’ ass and my will to live is -43.  In other coffee-related news, I really have to go try Starbucks Toffee Mocha.  So much yes.

So there ya go… expect more posts about other shit.  Whenever I sit down to write something, I go “damn what were all those good ideas I had?”  Now I’m writing down my ideas so I remember for later when I’m all hopped up on my NIGHT CAFFEINE, baby.

Jaclyn & Caitlyn – July 2010

Tonight’s YESCOFFEE project was hooking up a blog for my good, best, awesomest friend (hetero life-mate) Jaclyn.  She didn’t write anything yet, but her blog is http://hamburgercheeks.blogspot.com.  It’s gonna have stuff to do with parenting and not being a fucking weirdo about it, a.k.a. still being your own human being along with all the trials and tribulations of being a parent.  But cool.  Jaclyn is the best person ever, you will love her.  She is funny and she also has insight about things.  She could help you not raise a tardo if you let her.

Let me write some more about my best friend.  Perhaps that is what this post will be about.  Jaclyn and I have been BFFs since before saying BFF was even a thing.  So, since 1999.  It was our senior year of high school… and even though we had both known each other since probably middle school, we didn’t become friends until we had classes together in senior year.  In fact, prior to that, we both thought the other one was a weirdo.  My dad died in October 1999, and that was a really sad time, and it’s also right when we started being friends.  I would never have made it through that or any of the hard times in my life without her.

In high school, Jaclyn gave me a paper she wrote for our English class to type up for her, because I was good at typing and she wasn’t.  In the library, reading it as I typed I said “Wow, this paper is really good.  Don’t take this the wrong way, but I thought you were an idiot.”  Jaclyn is far from an idiot.  She is smart, but she had been really quiet in school and I don’t know I just thought she wasn’t smart for some reason.  We bonded over the fact we are both smart and sarcastic and could ridicule people without them even knowing it.  Sounds bitchy, but eh.  That’s kinda our thing.

April 2010

We have had so many adventures over the years.  There’ve been good times and bad, made up songs, about half a book of ridiculous quotations, Making the Rounds and the 1058’s.  Aside from being smart and funny, Jaclyn is also a really good friend.  She knows when I’m freaking out and how to soothe the beast.  She knows when to pacify me with baked goods and when to give me liquor.  Unrelated, this also makes her a great mom.  She has really good instincts and just knows what is right to do.  I always thought I’d have babies first, but I’m super glad that she did and that she will be a beacon of help and wisdom when my babytimes come.

Dying Easter Eggs 2010

We are a couple of weirdos together.  One time we were doing crafts at her house.  Painting a Christmas village, to be exact.  She suckered me into painting these tiny little houses for her.  It really sucked.  I liked crafts but I was working like a house elf painting these little stupid things.  We stopped for a snack, and I peeled an orange perfectly.  Like it all came off in one peel, you know?  That never happens.  I opened up to her about my secret wish.  I said “You know what I always wanted to do?  I always wanted to peel an orange perfectly and then glue the rind back together so it looks like an orange, but someone will be tricked when they go to eat it!”  She looked at me funny for a second, and then she got the crazy glue.  She wrote a note to her husband, who would inevitably try to peel this fauxrange and be confused, and put it inside my hollow shell of a citrus.  She put it back in her fridge and we just had to wait for the magic to happen.  He never tried to eat that orange… so that story kind of fizzled out, but you see what I mean.  We do stupid, funny shit together that normal people would frown upon.