LadyGypsy.net – the blog of Kimberly Dowd of New Jersey

Happy Friday! Oh holy cow this Friday could NOT come at a better time. It’s been a week.

This week’s Friday Five topic is one near and dear to my heart: SLEEP. I love my sleep. I am a champion sleeper. I can sleep pretty much anywhere and through anything. It’s a gift!

Away we go!

1. How many hours’ sleep do you need in order to be at your best, and what’s the minimum you can get on a regular basis and still be functional?

To be my best, I’m an 8 hour girl. Used to be 10. But in order for me to get that 8 during the week, I have to be in bed by 10:30 and I’m usually wide awake at thet time, so I usually get about 6.5 hours.

The bare minimum I can have and be functional is 4 hours. I’ll be functional, but unhappy.

2. What’s your favorite sleeping position?

On my right side, with two artfully stacked pillows. I don’t like to be flat…ideally I’d be like this __/ but I don’t have bed pillows with enough gumption to get me to that angle. I sleep better on the sofa, if you can believe that.

3. What was the cause of your most recent difficulty sleeping?

Worry.

Sunday night I worried about getting back to work after furlough. Monday afternoon I received a call about some blood work I had done – my “thyroid” is “low” (that’s all I was told) and I have a followup appointment with my doctor this coming Monday. I don’t WANT to have a bum thyroid. I don’t WANT to have to start taking medicines to regulate it. I’m AFRAID to start mucking around with my body’s basic functions. I feel FINE. I AM fine. So I’ve been worried about that.

Also, I have two teachers in my life whom I care about greatly. One can’t find a teaching job and the other might be affected by the statewide cuts to school districts. I worry about both of them. I have a huge project I’m supposed to be working on at work that I can’t find the time to work on due to other things on my task list.

I am one writhing ball of worry right now, Mister Friday Five. It is a wonder and a marvel that I can actually converse with people right now.

4. When you can’t seem to drift off to sleep right away, what are some things you do to bring about sleep?

I love visualization. I imagine floating out of my window and down the nearby major road, looking down at all the little shops. I imagine being back here. I imagine the action-movie screenplay that’s in my head that I’ll never write because I have no idea how to write a screenplay. But it’s kick-butt.

5. When did you last doze off at an inappropriate time or in an inappropriate place?

Days before I quit being a manager here (still the right decision) I had to go to our corporate office for a meeting. It was 2006 and I was dealing with the separation/divorce & the impending job change. The meeting was held in a large auditorium and I dozed off in my seat. One of my manager buddies woke me up. It was VERY embarrassing!

***

Wt: 164.0. Down 16.4 pounds.

Dream: I woke up to find a coworker in bed with me. I had no idea he was there, as he snuck in after I went to sleep and nothing happened. WM was not pleased. Nor was I.

I slept better last night, but there was still a lot of tossing and turning. I’m usually a champion sleeper and can quickly conk out in a bed, chair, on a sofa or floor, in a car, bus, train or plane. Could it be latent worries about the financial crisis? (Dear gov’t: since you are bailing out your big business buddies, can you forgive me about $17K in credit card debt? kthxbye) And I just don’t know enough about what’s going on to know if the bailout failing was good or bad – neither party seemed wholly on board with it. If anyone can point me to a primer of sorts on what’s going wrong, drop me a link in the comments. Hopping into the story now is like trying to hop into “Lost.”*

I really wanted Pelosi to be a great Speaker of the House, but she’s not too skilled with consensus building and failed to get her own (D) team to pass this bill on their own – they had the numbers.

I just want to know when I need to scope out my apple-selling corner or if I should have gone to the Starbucks job fair at lunch yesterday for a part time gig.

Anyway, the resolutions of yesterday’s “issues” that plagued me:

I took the Ben Franklin bridge and the happy travelers are home safe.

Diet. Bleah. But ignore me for now and congratulate Dave in California (not to be confused with Dr. Dave or BvP) on making his weight loss goal. He did it the way it’s supposed to be done. Huzzah!! (tosses confetti)

The C-P is moving its staff blogs to a new server, so my WoW blog’s undergoing a bit of maintenance at the moment. So no real updating until I copy over my old posts. I’ll promote the new link here when it’s ready. I’d love to have the most successful non-sports blog there. Why? Because I’m one of only two staff bloggers who doesn’t have the name recognition of writing for the paper.

The bangs are really a long layer, and they’re cute. They do start bugging mid-day, so I end up pulling them back anyway.

Samantha Who starts in 2 weeks, and this year’s “Dancing” cast is pretty meh. With the exception of Warren Sapp, that is. He can move!

Meet & Greet pushed back ’til Thursday which gives me time to track down the 4 ads that we have no artwork/copy for.

Still missing a house. But that’ll come.

The car’s pretty well aired out and the Febreze seemed to work. I’m going to take it to a car wash at lunch and vacuum out the interior because a summer of festivals and fun has left me with a sandy, junky car.

*By the way, have you seen the little one-sheet pieces at Starbucks? Each week up to the election they (partnered with Good magazine) put out a free info sheet on an important issue. It looks to be one broadsheet folded in half then quarters. This week’s is on Immigration. It’s very graphical and downright genius because it explains the issue, the controversies, and where each of the candidates stand. Genius, genius, genius.

Gannett Freezes Employee Pensions, Ups 401(k)

So yeah…there’s a lot of negative talk out there about the newspaper industry. And yeah…everytime I get an email from the CEO I cringe because it’s usually bad news. But I believe…I really believe…that the pendulum will start to swing back in the other direction, we’ll all find our way in this crazy info-saturated world, and the industry will right itself again.