NO LOVE!!

Sometimes my Life is about foolishness. Such as...

...I enjoy sleep. I enjoy it for the fullness of its definition- a condition of body and mind in which the nervous system is relatively inactive, the eyes closed, the postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness practically suspended; complete silence or stillness. Doesn’t that sound divine? Who doesn’t want that every night? I don’t recall being the child whose sole desire was to stay up as late as possible. Sleepovers notwithstanding, I was good to carry my tail to bed. & now? The folks who spend the most time with me can spot the sight & sounds, the look & feel of a tired Ndygo & know it’s best to just let it happen. There’s only 1 person who has to fight me to go to bed & that’s simply because I savor our time together that I resist its end. Other than that, I believe in my pillow & mattress like a religion.

So what, Ndygo?!? So, I don’t play ‘bout my rest. Recently I had a stress related bout with insomnia. I resented the root of it & having to take ANY measures to go to sleep outside of simply putting head to pillow. On top of my inability to sleep was my Upstairs Neighbor & his disrespectful antics that include walking about in cinder block slippers, speaking in surround sound & wig snatching at all hours of the morning. He also has a propensity for movies in the early a.m. hours of weeknights, & carpentry mood swings while folks should be sleep. On a regular night, with regular sleep habits, Upstairs Neighbor is a lot to deal with. When suffering insomnia he’s enough to push me over the edge. Remedy: laying awake wearing earplugs. To understand the power of his noisemaking super powers, know that earplugs only muffled the sounds coming from above. Yes, friends, Upstairs Neighbor is loud enough to still hear the words of his conversation through earplugs. This situation got so ridiculous that I was grateful for the beginning of allergy season because the allergy meds knocked me out & I was finally able to sleep. I won’t say how long it actually took to achieve sleep because by day 3 of insomnia it felt like I’d never slept in my life. It lasted longer than a week but I am unable to say just how long.

That was almost a month ago. After alleviating the stress, I have since returned to my own natural sleep patterns. I was so happy to be back to normal I think I celebrated with cupcakes.

Last night, however, I lay me down to sleep. I had my tea, despite the heat, & some soothing thoughts. I peeled the covers back to reveal the cool sheet. I stretched out & nodded like a drunk. Around 2 a.m. I got confused as there were words I was hearing that weren’t registering with the dream I thought I was having. After shaking through the fog of what should have still been deep sleep, I realized it was Upstairs Neighbor’s voice I was hearing. He was on the phone. At 2 a.m. Speaking in, for him, hushed tones. That I could hear. 1 floor below. A Boo Lovin’ & Phone Bonin’ FAIL since it involved more than the 2 people it was intended for. Honestly, I don’t know what’s worse—him talking to her on the phone all night or the sounds of them doing the grown up & her sounding more like his boyfriend than his girlfriend. Boooooo…Hisssssssssss!! I reached for my earplugs that remain by the bed for emergencies such as this & attempted to regain the depths of my relatively inactive nervous system.

A trip to the bathroom, a change of position & a shift of the sheets & I was back at it. I managed to put Upstairs Neighbor & his shenanigans in the recesses of my mind, though he was still audible, & tried to salvage the time between sleepus interruptus & alarmus ringus. 2 hours later my efforts became a dream deferred & more voices crept in to distract me from my work. A belligerent male’s voice floated in on the pre-dawn breeze from the front windows. From my bed, refusing to move & become a part of this tragically comedic film reel, I surmised that a man who had smoked something of a quality his system wasn’t ready for stood in the street shouting up at the window of a man who’d done him dirty. He called the man all outta his name, gender & sexual orientation. For about 15 minutes. This was the kind of indecent rant that made me want to go to my own window & yell back a la Coming To America. It made me want to thrust water on him—though it sounded like he was across the street—a la School Daze. I should have called the police on them both but the phones seemed so far away. I cursed them both & put the pillow over my head, hoping to somehow squeeze them out of my reality & drift back into a dreamlike state for the few minutes I had left before it was time to make the donuts.

Needless to say, I hit snooze twice, feeling like I was owed from the nonsense that stole parts of my precious sleep from me. & somehow I still managed to come to work looking like Spring has sprung.

Moral of this story: never live under anyone & stack those chips cuz home ownership is where it’s at. Oh, & hoodrats do hoodrat things.

Watch me move.