Pre-Insomnia

I’m going to be really tired on Monday.

Today is Saturday. Last night, I slept alone, because my wife is away attending a wedding. I was supposed to be with her, but last week one of my company’s customers asked if I would come into their office tomorrow morning while we are doing a system upgrade. Efforts to persuade them otherwise were fruitless, and so yesterday afternoon my wife and daughter left without me for the drive up to eastern Connecticut. It’s about a six hour drive, a seven or seven and a half hour trip what with stopping along the way.

When I sleep alone, the first night is always rocky. For the longest time, I thought that that was because it took me a while to get used to hotel beds – travel for business being the usual reason that I slept alone – but I finally realized that it was simply the process of sleeping alone that did it. I am apparently used to the feeling of someone else next to me. I suggested to my wife that I engage a ‘sleeping partner’ purely for the purposes of sleeping better, but that didn’t go over too well.

Tomorrow morning I am getting up at around 4:30 or 5. I will most likely wake up before the alarm – I almost always do, when I need to get up early – and after I stagger around for a bit, I’ll get dressed and drive into the city. The good news, such as it is, is that the trip should be quick. I don’t expect much traffic on the local roads at that hour. I’ll then spend about five hours hanging out with customer people, watching them test the system upgrade, and possibly handling problems – I don’t expect any, but you never know. With luck, I'll get some reading done. I have the book on Python that I'd like to go through, and I picked up a couple at the library this morning -- a thriller, some science fiction, and a massive Culinary Institute of America collection of brunch-related recipes. Somehow, I don't think it'll the one that makes the trip, enticing as it looks.

Around ten AM, they’ll decide whether it’s a success or not, and around eleven, we’ll get to leave. I’ll stop at the store for the Sunday papers, come home, and crash. That in turn will screw up my sleep pattern for Sunday night, making Monday morning alertness problematic.

I’m going to be really tired on Monday.