Fans: Robbers of Sleeps

Like most people I enjoy my time with friends and family but also cherish alone time.  I have a lot of alone time on my hands now since Daniel works 28 days away from home, then he gets to come home for 28 days.  It's an adjustment and I know it's not for everyone, but we have so far made it work.

Every now and then though when he is gone, my brain eats itself and I flip out.  Last night was one of those nights.

I have 2200 square feet all to myself that I only have to share with my two cats.  It's way too much house for us, but it was either this, live in a smaller home around poor people in a bad neighborhood or live in a tiny old run down house that we paid way too much for around rich people.  So big nice house in the suburbs around average people it is.

2200 square feet equates in my mind as: too much to clean and too many places for the boogie man, thieves in the night and sasquatch to hide.

Yesterday I found a small fan in the spare bedroom and decided since I've been really hot at night that I should plug that bad boy in and everything would be wonderful in my life.  I was wrong.

See I grew up in San Antonio, TX and we did not have a functioning air conditioner in our house.  I'm not sure if it worked at some point and broke or if it just never worked.  But from the age of 3 until 18, I did not have air conditioning.  So, box fans were a plenty in our house.  They were the only way to not die, really.  Most days they just blew hot air around like a giant hair dryer, but it's what we had.  Add to this that our house was not exactly in the nicest of neighborhoods and that we were on the busiest corner in that neighborhood.  During the winter, I would leave my fan on low because otherwise I would hear everything going on outside that you just didn't want to hear.  I could drown out the neighbors screaming at each other and the screeching tires of some drunk dude's car and the all the gangstas driving by too slow for this white girl's comfort with their bass thumping.   But the difference between then and now (okay one of the differences) is that I was never in that house alone.  EVER.  I wasn't allowed to be.  If my brothers weren't home, I was supposed to go to a friends until they got home.

So here I lay...all alone in my quiet suburban neighborhood home with a fan cooling me down like the old days and I was just about to drift off to sleep when something went thump in the night.   Not screeching tires or screaming neighbors...something in the house, down my stairs moved from where it was to somewhere else creating noise that I plainly heard over my fan.

After about 2 minutes I gained the courage to sit up, turn on the light and put on my glasses in order to sit in my bed and stare at my door.  After about 15 minutes of that I got the nerve to get up and walk downstairs.  I found the culprit (a cup that I had set upside down aside the sink to dry out had fallen into the sink) grabbed some water, looked in all the closets and went back upstairs.  Where I sat for another hour convinced that I was hearing things.  Three times I leaned over to place my glasses on the nightstand and all three times I was convinced something was coming after me at that exact moment.  I was getting on my own nerves.  So after that hour I figured I'd read.  So I read.  Then I decided to watch some Cheers on Netflix. So I watched two episodes.   Last time I looked at the clock it was 3:15.  I woke up this morning with my glasses still on my face and the light still on.  At least I fell asleep?

I blame this whole ordeal on that damn fan.  I decided tonight to leave that fan off in hopes of getting some sleep.  I may be sweating all night, but at least I'll be asleep for it.