Finally, I'm home from my last out-of-state trip to promote my book. I'd recently gone to Seattle, which is one of the most beautiful, liveable cities I've ever visited. But it's so nice now to be home for good.
I've been trying to get my old sleep patterns back; this Fall's travels have had me waking up after only 3-4 hours' sleep a night. After trying warm milk and honey, camomile tea, melatonin and other over-the-counter sleep-aids, I had to resort to prescription sleeping pills. They kept me functioning, but they had a side-effect of making me feel like I was coming down with the flu during the day. That reminded me to pack vitamin C and other supplements which I think kept me from getting the real flu, but now that I'm back home for good, I've jettisoned the sleeping pills to try to get back to my natural sleep cycle. And finally, this past week everything came together, and now when I first wake up in the morning, it's dreams I remember instead of long bouts of tossing and turning trying to get back to sleep. This is the first week in months that I catch myself feeling odd moments of bounce, anticipation, during the day. It's the first time I don't feel like I'm trapped in a kind of half-life, putting things off till I have more energy.
Here's how I did it, in case any of you are experiencing the same problem (sleeping the first part of the night, then staying awake from 1 am on). 1. No more than one cup of coffee each morning 2. No alcohol on week nights, 3. An hour's fast-walk each morning (this has cured our dog's itchiness, which just developed this Fall when we had to interrupt our morning walks) 4. Weight-lifting three times a week, and 5. sleeping with the window cracked for fresh air (plugged open with a sock).
As with all goals here in middle-age, I don't expect to stick to all five of these rules every single week. Goals, in this more relaxed time of life, have become something to aspire to, not something to chain myself to. I'm hoping that one more week of loose adherence to this schedule will cement the sleep pattern I've just now started to enjoy.
This has been the big homecoming reward, getting back to normal nights' sleep. But within that, on a smaller return from a visit to the local dogpark the other day, my husband and I found a bluejay lying on its side in front of our garage. When we tried to set it up on its feet, it flapped a wing but kept wobbling over onto its side.
We'd left the garage door open, and I suspect the bird had flown in and couldn't find his way out, and - lured by the light in the windows, beat himself against it to a broken wing. My husband and I put the bird in a cardboard box and brought it into the cellar so it wouldn't freeze. Then I dialed the Audubon Society, and - referred to a long list of wildlife vets and bird rehabilitators - I finally found a place within an hour's drive where I could hand the bird off to another driver who would take him to a rehabilitation center called Avian Haven. This is a network of volunteers who rehabilitate birds and release them back to the wild. Their website has wonderful stories of their work. They're based in a small rural town two hours' north of us, aptly named Freedom, Maine.
There's something poignant about people in this challenging economy and fierce winter climate trying to help birds - for no pay and little recognition. These people x-rayed our injured jay, didn't find any breaks and thus determined some neurological injury, probably because of flying into one of our windows. They put him in an incubator and hand-fed him for about five days. But he got weaker every day and finally died. On autopsy, they found that he had a skull-fracture.
We've put audubon silhouettes of hawks on a number of our house windows, which has cut down such incidents, but now it's time to do it to our garage windows as well. It's the least we can do, seeing as we've built up the bird-population around our house - and thus their risk of injury - by putting out bird-feeders.
This is a part of homecoming as well: small sorrows in the deeper joy of ongoing engagement. There are always improvements to make, maintenance to make our home more natural, less intrusive and threatening to wildlife. It's good to be home, to have the energy once more to take on the daily challenges of rural winter.
