Oh, wait. I said that already.

I was going to title this post, "This is your brain on lack of sleep," but I see that I already have.  Last weekend, in fact.  That should tell you how things are still going for me.

I have worked nearly three weeks straight, for 15 hour weekdays and 10 or 12 hour weekends (including Sundays).  One day this week, the crew leads voted to come in an hour early the next morning.  Naturally, the people who voted in favor were not the people who have been working late every night.  I was out of the room, so I could not object.  I felt like Opus being nominated for Vice-President.  (I didn't even get any Cheetos out of it!)

I noticed that this consistent period of insufficient sleep caused me to have symptoms of minor memory loss and word substitution, like early stages of dementia.  (I call it having a "leaky brain".)  Most often, I couldn't remember which day we did which tasks, and I frequently mixed up the names of school sites, but twice I can't even remember seeing people whom coworkers insist were working on the same crew as myself.  It was almost like college, when my friends discovered that I'd say things even more humorous than usual if they kept me up past my usual bedtime.  (Keep me up late and feed me alcohol, and I, apparently, am a scream.)  Another example is that I can't imagine how a coworker and I ended up mentioning this song last night.



I told my boss that I wanted Sunday off, so that I could do laundry.  (The kicker would've been how to get to the bank while working on Saturday, to get quarters so that I could do laundry the next day.)  However, circumstances favored all of us, and we were able to take both today and tomorrow off.  I was able to water my patio pots this morning, and it's so pleasurable to see them (my upstairs neighbor might have been watering them during the week, as none of them looks to be dying) and my apartment in daylight again.  I also took an hour to exchange books at the library, drop off outgoing bill payments at the post office, get my quarters from the bank, and get some groceries (from the store which houses the bank branch) that I can't get from my usual market.  Running errands has never felt so good!  (I'm saving the laundry for tomorrow.)

What I won't find out this weekend, though, is why I came home one night (don't know which night; all days are running together for me now) and couldn't take my usual path from the parking lot to my apartment because the sidewalk between the buildings had been torn up.  So, I walked the slightly longer way around the other end of the building (and started parking my car closer to that end).  This morning, since I was around when the sun rose, I saw orange, construction fence around the missing sidewalk, and what looks like black, polyethylene pipe (like irrigation piping, but it has connections I don't recognize as irrigation parts) under where the sidewalk had been (and who would run irrigation line under the length of a sidewalk anyway?), and yellow and orange utility-locate paint on the remaining sidewalks and grass and dirt in the vicinity.  The apartment office is open only on weekdays, though, so I'll have to wait to ask what's going on.  (Maybe Wednesday I'll get off work at the old, regular time, although my boss's boss sent another e-mail of tasks last thing yesterday -- but I vowed not to ponder it until I get to work Monday morning.)

On the way back to the shop after mowing last night, I talked myself into a late dinner at Hideaway Pizza (expensive but with leftovers, so each meal I can stretch it into makes it more affordable per plate).  I know I have little spendable money to waste on such an extravagance, but after working three weeks straight, from dark to dark, I deserve a treat, dammit!  Now, other than the errands this morning and visiting the laundry room tomorrow, I'm locking myself inside my apartment and saying, "Screw you!" to the world this weekend.  (Well, to the rest of the world other than you guys, obviously.)