So here I am dozing peacefully with the window open, 3 am, and Sei jumps up and runs to the window, tail bushed.
Now Shu, the Night Fury, our fierce black Bengal that no stranger should try to touch, is great at attacking people IN the house, and will defend a hotel room against all comers, is ok with most anything going on OUTSIDE.
Sei, our marshmallow, never bites, never hisses, gentle-natured Scottish Fold, is the one that will alert on anybody approaching the house in the dark. Sei was the one who caught the thief trying to make off with the snowblower. He bushed up, flicking his ear at the front window (hey! there! there! there!) and I got up from my easy chair and scared the blighter out of a few years of life. I did get a look at his face before he ran like a rabbit.
So I take it seriously when Sei alerts. And he was telling me there was something wrong in the garden. But I’m not the spring chicken who’d go on burglar patrol with a firearm back when I lived on the undeveloped edge of town in Oklahoma. I just turned on lights that shine into that space, and alerted Jane, who turned on the front lights. But I wasn’t going out there in the cold dark, hunting for a prowler.
Neither was I getting much sleep, because Seishi wasn’t giving up his watch on that window. By now I figured it wasn’t a human intruder, who’d, unless he was stoned out of his mind, not likely hang about when the lights went on—but I didn’t want a raccoon taking after the koi, either.
So I watched a number of hours of How the Universe Works, wide awake, with a very jazzed cat, until the first of daylight, at which point Sei wanted out of the room and I finally tried to get some sleep.
Went out this morning to do a tour and figure out what was going on…and the only thing amiss was the tarp blown off the fridge and range we have sitting out on the patio waiting for Habitat for Humanity to come get them. We presented ourselves with a nice new set, but could not stand reasonably ok appliances being carted off to recycling. So we called Habitat, and yes, they’d take them. So there they’ve stood through several rains, with another possible, and they should get them this week.
I think that made a noise Sei didn’t like, though he couldn’t see it from my window. At any rate I feel as if I’ve been run over by a truck and hope that as the day progresses I’ll wake up and function.
Sei still gets credit. He’s a good watchcat.
Lights on motion sensors? We have them and you get the odd blast of light when animals get too close but it’s a quick and easy thing to do.
Good job, Sei-kun! Even if you were awake too long.
You don’t suppose the raccoon was trying to do an extra load or two of washing? After all, they wash their food and their paws and faces, it makes sene they’d wash their, I don’t know, raccoon hoodies? Raccoon overalls? Raccoon space cadet jumpsuits? Hmm. — Did you check the fridge to see if the raccoons left a six pack or a head of cabbage or… whatever it is raccoons would have a hankering for in the middle of the night? Fish sauce? Pickled tomatoes? Really, I don’t know. 😀
My sleep/wake hours are (once again) askew. I think it’s the change of season, rather than the time change finally catching up. But I guess I will always have this problem of a seriously wonky lack-of-a-sleep-cycle. I’m a night owl by nature, I’ve had sleep cyle problems since college, but being a caregiver blew it out of the water, and it’s never gotten back on track since, despite several bouts (over months) of concerted effort to keep a rigid sleep schedule. Sigh. Dunno what’s out of alignment in my biochem, or why, but it is. So… I get by on 4 to 6 hour naps, evening and/or night, and since I’m at home, occasionally during the morning; but I try hard not to sleep during the daylight hours. Still… I suppose I’m more suited to the nocturnal “alterday” shifts.
Goober and Smokey continue to share the bed again after the Rapprochement ending the Great Bed Ban. (The ban was mutual betweeen them and very much not my idea.) I am glad it’s settled.
Strange folk, these felines, but unfailingly interesting.
Raccoons will eat anything they can get hold of. (And sometimes things they can’t get hold of. My sister had one, or more, get into a box with a mug and a cocoa packet. Then they tried to ‘wash’ the cocoa in the cat’s water dish….)
Cats really don’t like raccoons. When I was much younger, the cat alerted us to one that was on the covered patio, sorting through the walnuts left there to dry. In the middle of a major city.)
And they can open anything shy of lock and key, but even that if you leave the key in the lock, as some are wont to do.
In my suburban neighbourhood there are three things besides dogs and cars that will attack cats, possibly fatally: skunks, coyotes and raccoons. Coyotes actually eat cats, the others see cats as competition for food. So wise cats avoid raccoons, though they certainly alert people to their presence. A good argument for having a cat door that can only be opened by an animal with a radio collar.
So many people treat raccoons as cute little things that are issued by Disney. They’ve never seen a kitchen that has been taken apart by a family of raccoons. Think 12 lb. bear and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the raccoon schtick.
‘Round here you can add cougars to the list!
Coyotes do eat cats. I drew the 12Ga down on one for that reason. He kept running, but didn’t get any further than the hedgerow where he tried to hide.
I love “How the Universe Works.” It’s one of my favorite shows. (I also love anything with Dr. Brian Cox in it. Ditto Neil deGrasse Tyson.)I especially like Dr. Michelle Thaller, and the name “Moogega.” I’m sure it’s intentional, but I love how they have diversity in their choice of scientists and how a goodly percentage of them are women. However, somebody needs to clue Dr. Thaller how to conjugate “slingshot” when used as a verb. (slung shot?!?!?)
Good that you have a good watch cat. I have often speculated how real the “outside” world is to them since they see it without being able to smell it.
I get tickled at Jaks, the only one I have left now, when he routinely presents his backside for me to verify his identity. I seem to have this baffling and amazing ability to tell who he is without smelling his butt. (“I know who you are. Sit down.”) Of all of them, he is the most gregarious, which is fortunate. Now that he is the only one, he has to go to the pet hotel whem mom and I travel, but he gets along OK when he realizes that people there will pet him, which he adores. It’s better to take him there than to have people come in and take care of him in my apartment. He would not do well on his own for so long.
I hear you, Blue Cat Ship, about your circadian rhythm being wonky. I’m a night WOL too. I worked from 9 pm to 5 am doing medical transcription from my home for the better part of 20 years, and was perfectly content with that shift — I volunteered for it. I have a theory that it partly involves the time of day you were born. I was born just after noon. I struggle to remain on day shift. Now that my mom is on her own, I try to stay on her schedule. She likes to travel, and wants me to go places with her as a traveling companion, which is OK by me. She is a lark. Wakes up at sunup, goes to bed with the chickens. Obviously we are birds of a different feather.
I have a theory about sleep cycles; one which does not involve the phrase ‘moral failing’. As a member of a group of projectile weaponless folks, living where there are major predators and no walls and locking doors, I think all would be safer if someone were always awake to at least cry warning. ‘Course, being an owl myself, the idea that only the lazy and wicked are so offends me.
You are correct. An anthropologist was pulling an all nighter while visiting an (almost) uncontacted tribe when she noticed an odd sleep pattern. She emailed all the other anthropologists studying (almost) uncontacted tribes. They all gave the same report: people went to sleep at varying times in the evening, slept for 3-4 hours, woke for one to three hours (talking quietly, making love, writing, etc.) then had a second period of 3-4 hours of sleep. (Various cultures also have an after lunch siesta in their sleep patterns, but I don’t know if this was found among uncontacted tribes by anthropologists.)
The effect, of course, is that even a small tribe has someone awake (watching–whence the military use of “watch” for a time period) at all times. Quite a few mentions of first or second sleep have been mistranslated out of existence, notably in the Odyssey.
Some writers felt that writing between sleeps was especially productive. Folklore suggested making love at this time was more likely to lead to pregnancy.
This pattern of sleep was common until the industrial revolution. Continuous sleep is an invention of the industrial revolution and its 14 hour work days.
I suggest to anyone whose schedule permits it, if you don’t really feel like sleeping, get up and do for as long as comfortable, but avoid bright or blue lights which may disrupt your sleep cycle. I think looking at a mostly white laptop screen, as I’m doing now, is not ideal. I generally read e-books green-on-black for better sleep “hygiene”.
@Walt: You’re right about the lights.
I remember back in college reading about a University plant physiology experiment gone wrong. It turns out Security was entering the greenhouse, flipping on the lights for a few minutes in the middle of the night as he checked it out, then flipped them off and went on his way. The plants noticed!
In our case, the pineal gland “notices”!
On the rare occasions when I have to get up in the night, I try to avoid turning on a light if at all possible. These days there’s enough street lighting coming in the windows, and one nightlight in the kitchen, that I can usually pull it off. I think it helps me get back to sleep. I don’t “feel it” the next day. 🙂
Thanks, @Tommie and @Walt , that sounds logical and makes me feel better. I *think* my sleep pattern stays somewhat stable, but may tend to precess in some way, or else it’ll go along shakily OK, then snap into, “You’ve had a sleep deficit way too long, so you’ll either sleep extra, or not sleep any and then sleep extra,” at which point, it has some period of adjustment before getting onto a not-quite-stable cycle for another while.
I have never really tried to track and map this. I don’t know what it is, but when I’ve said anything, doctors tend to dismiss it and say as long as I’m getting some sleep, it’s OK. I suspect there’s something slightly out of whack, or else I’d have a solid, stable sleep pattern, even if it’s non-standard. But for years now, it’s been wonky.
I think I’ll start logging my sleep/wake cycle and see if I come up with any pattern over a few months.
I recently bought a small bottle of ZzzQuil, but haven’t used it. I *really* don’t want to rely on anything that could be habit-forming, and I gnerally dislike any “medicine,” because anything (antibiotics particularly) tends to make me either too hyper or just flat knocks me out, sleeping a lot, until I’m used to the course of medication. So I tend to stay away from anything, even aspirin or the like, as much as possible.
Consider Melatonin for sleep problems. I don’t need it but DH swears by it. I would use it before starting ZzzQuil.
I second melatonin for a try. One pill, about an hour before bedtime. It’s what your body SHOULD produce naturally in sufficient amounts to aid the sleep cycle, and sometimes doesn’t. Your body naturally absorbs it as light dawns, and so the cycle goes.
Thanks, @tulrose and @CJ , I will try that. Thinking further — When I moved into my present house, I was without a reliable fridge for a while, and I got out of the habit of drinking milk regularly. (I’m not lactose-intolerant, thankfully.) I’m going to get back into a regular habit of drinking milk, but I’ll also look for Melatonin. I’m starting a log for my sleep habits too, even if it’s an estimate at first.
Be it noted, I’m not an X5 clone from the Dark Angel TV series, haha..l
Also, waking up to morning light is good for your sleep cycle. If your bedroom is so heavily draped you can sleep through dawn, you tend to go out of sync with the sun. Of course, in Winter, that can mean a cold bedroom.
I recently read an article that reported on research contradicting the idea that sleeping in two chunks is the natural ancestral pattern. Their conclusions were that healthy sleeping patterns not only had a lot to do with getting lots of light in the morning, to set the daily clock (there’s old research about humans who live in a dark environment without external clues about what time it is developing a 25-hour daily rythm, which appears to be backed up with how some kinds of blindness can mess with a person’s sleeping pattern); but also, that the sleeping pattern of these tribes without artificial light corresponded with temperature, not light – they fell asleep when it started to cool off, several hours after it became dark. So a cool bedroom is a good thing for falling asleep, though it might be hard to achieve in Texas without airconditioning.
And I agree with the suggestion of Melatonin, as I have used it too, with the addition of a bit of Valerian to calm my restless legs and help me sleep.
I’m pretty sure I read about the anthropologists in Science News, which summarizes a wide variety of peer-reviewed journals. However, “The two-sleep pattern was probably due to humans migrating so far from the equator that they had long dark periods,” makes a lot of sense. The anthropologists assessments were collected anecdotes, essentially. It wasn’t a controlled study, with notes about the latitude of the tribes, season, etc.
However, defining equatorial tribes as normal sets aside a lot of human evolution, notably including lactose tolerance, alcohol tolerance, long noses for cold climates, light skin for vitamin D in high latitudes, etc. I can certainly see that two sleeps would work better with 12 hours of darkness rather than only 8.
@Walt: I wish!
“Nov. 18, 2015 Rise …. Set
Actual Time… 7:14 AM 4:38 PM”
I make that 4:46 from sunrise to noon, plus 4:38 noon to sunset, 8:84 or 9:24 daylight today, so 14:36 darkness. Just doin’ that in my head–did I get it right or slip a carry somewhere? I know in just over a month we’ll be right at 8hrs of daylight, 16hrs of darkness at 45°N! 🙁
Paul, of course, the (ant)arctic regions can be day or night for months. Beyond sunset to sunrise is twilight to twilight for several definitions: civil dusk to dawn is when you need headlights or an instrument flight rating; nautical dusk to dawn is when you can see common (bright) navigation stars; astronomical duck to dawn is when you can see dim stars, though this may not be dark enough for some observations. Looser, colloquial terms exist, like full dark, first light, false dawn….
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight
I don’t know about this “fire” invention. Unnatural. What, after all, are microwaves for?
I can report I got a full 10 hours sleep last night–headed for bed at 8, and up at color-dawn, ie when you can make out the red bridge in the garden as red—
I have given the cats morning treats, I have a hot cup of coffee, and I am giving Jane, who I know didn’t get to bed until after 12, a chance to sleep in.
We taped down that tarp, so it stayed put. And we got a guy to haul off the accumulated junk pile by the garage, so that was a good job yesterday, too—thank you to our Shejidani guests who helped us add to it—it is now gone.
We are hoping for the delivery of a sample box of our flooring tomorrow, which will let us see if it is the color we hope it is. We’ve laid laminate before—back in our apartment days, when we had grey kitchen carpet many tenants too old to be sanitary. We made a floating laminate floor and took it with us when we moved. And it was solid. So we are looking at replacing the floor in the bedrooms, office, and hall during the ‘slow’ period of next-book startup. You do more thinking and planning than keywork during that phase, so we actually can do this and do headwork at the same time.
So you’ve sidelined the notion of refinishing the red oak flooring you discovered under the deceased carpet? That would have involved trying to find a match to the part in Jane’s room that is unfinished, so maybe this is quicker and easier. Laying laminate may be as conducive to mental activity as something like knitting, where the hands are active while the mind putters. Just make sure you have anything that involves measuring already taken care of, like the fiddly bits around floor edges!
We’re definitely going for laminate, and it’s another case of two homeowners having to FIX a thing professions skimmed by on in the thought the contractor/buyer would never notice. They didn’t have ply of a proper thickness. They used it anyway, thinking the carpet pad would cover a seam we’ve felt every time we cross that area barefoot. The hall and half of Jane’s room are plywood that is some silly fraction of an inch lower than the rest of the floor. So we are going to have to buy the skinniest veneer or plywood we can and nail it down over a third of Jane’s room and down the hall before we can start work on the laminate. This tiny job entails ripping a long board, which is a pita with home-owned equipment. I think we’ll get the store to rip all boards into pieces no greater than 3 feet, so we can at least use the table saw on them without needing a trolley to help us—whatever they really call those rolling frames.
You can get plywood as thin as 1/8″, although that’s more usually found in hobby shops in 2’x2′ chunks; 1/4″ is the thinnest I’ve seen in home improvement stores. When I was redoing the kitchen cabinets, I also found you could get cement backerboard in fairly thin thicknesses; I used 2 thicknesses, one for the backsplash, and one for the countertops. That might be overly brittle for floor traffic, though.
The lumber yard where I work carries two things you might use. 1/8 inch mahogany door skins comes in 3 foot by 7 foot sheets. 1/8 inch hardboard (used to be called Masonite) comes in 4 foot by 8 foot tempered or untempered sheets. The big box stores might have them.
I spent my first night wearing a heart monitor last night. A couple of weeks ago, I started having heart palpitations, so my physician prescribed an event monitor. I have to wear this for 2 weeks. Well, maybe it’s nothing, but after having lost 2 younger brothers to heart conditions, I do not want to take a chance.
Sleep was broken, I tossed and turned, and at 6:45AM, there was the persistent sound of a black cat outside my bedroom door telling me it was time to get up. (No! No! A thousand times No!)
Sorry about the heart issues, but at least your cat lets you sleep in past 6!
Indeed, we worry about you. I went through this and was on Tenormin for a while after a series of deaths and illnesses in the family. As life calmed down, I’ve ceased to need it and am doing fine. HOping they can resolve it for you with a simple pill.
In case one doesn’t know it, us folk are likely to be taking an ACE or ARB and a thiazide diuretic. Maybe a baby aspirin too? And we get pains too, and not necessarily the sort that just lying to your brain with acetominophen is enough. Adding NSAIDs to the ACE/ARB-thiazide combination has a known interaction effect on the kidneys, up to and including kidney failure. My last tests showed kidney numbers out of range. I’ve dropped my thiazide (and baby aspirin) because I’m unwilling to never take my prescription NSAID for sciatic/hip pain again. See your doctor. I’m going back after T’giving.
have already seen the PCM, she’s the one who referred this to cardiology, who called for the heart monitor. So far, in the past few days, I’ve had 2 “events” that I’ve called in manually. I don’t know how many events have been sent by this monitor, as I don’t watch the screen constantly, and it’s a Blackberry-style phone that I keep in its carrying case when I’m not charging it. In fact, I just had another manual event report as I sat here typing this. I’m scheduled to wear this monitor until November 25, all day and night, unless I’m taking a shower or in the pool at the YMCA.
I don’t take aspirin products as a rule, simply because I’m already taking one NSAID (naproxen), one tablet per day – which is half the recommended dosage for arthritis pain. I’m not taking any other medication for pain except the acetaminophin, and that’s 1300mg in the morning only. I rarely take anything in the evening, as the pain usually isn’t present. It’s only when I wake up that there seems to be any pain and the acetaminophin and naproxen are as much for preventative as for allayment. I’ve got tendinitis in my left bicep, and the naproxen and acetaminophin are as much for that as the arthritis.
When I send this back to the lab, I’ll contact my PCM and ask her what she wants me to do next. It’s difficult to get appointments with her as staffing at the Air Force hospital is reduced due to deployments of physicians and medical techs to the Middle East….
CJ & Jane: Just for curiosity’s sake, now that it’s sweatshirt weather, 1)who ended up with which sweatshirt and 2)do they fit?
They do fit, and we kind of trade them about. 😉 They’re very warm and cozy!
Off-Topic: Kitten Scale. Over on John Scalzi’s blog, his recent post re contracts got a comment saying the photo needed a kitten for scale. (The Scalzis have two new kittens.) The commenter went on to suggest that a kitten equalling a foot in scale didn’t seem right, so perhaps the scale was 1 kitten = a tempest; or perhaps 1 kitten = a curiosity. Those two were just too good not to pass along here. A kitten equals a curiosity in scale. Or a kitten equals a tempest in scale. This could depend on local variable factors, one thinks. Great stuff. (I recently found Scalzi’s blog, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 hooked me in, and then there was stuff about writing and ideas and…yeah! 😀
IT’S BACK!
I’ve got Lyme Disease again! I got two little bites last july that never really cleared up. No bullseye, just these funny little bites. My dr. saw them at my annual physical and suggested a test. One of the benefits of having a good primary care dr. is that she has records of my past bouts and can easily compare my levels. I’m on doxycycline for three weeks then another test. Just what I need to prep for Christmas sales. Happily it’s only Lyme and not Babesius or Erlichiosis!
Again I say……Growing older is not for the faint of heart!!
That’s not a happy surprise! Sorry to hear!
Ouch. Not fun, Smartcat. Keep going on that doxycycline—religiously. My mother has had Lyme I don’t know how many times at this point. She lives in Tick Central, NH. Last year she was hospitalized with high fevers from Lyme and Babesius but luckily major antibiotics seem to have taken care of them. Ticks, which never were a problem in rural New England, now are major threats.
Babesius is supposed to be the worst. So glad that your mother came through it.
My dr. has said that she will probably put me in the hospital if I get it. She feels two strong iv antibiotics are the cure.
Just about everyone I know in this area has had Lyme at least once. Except my son and he spends a lot of time outside year round. Go figure!
Many thanks to Hanneke’s heads-up that Chanur’s Homecoming is at last available for Kobo and for Amazon Kindle! Thus, all five Chanur volumes are available. They’re also available in audiobook format from Audible.com .
When I purchased for the Kindle, I got a curious recommendation for two books by Ilona Andrews: Clean Sweep and Sweep in Peace. Looking, these are about a woman innkeeper, where the inn, her broom, her “dog,” and guests are, well, not what they seem. This is science fiction with possibly a slight fantasy infusing. The first volume’s $2 and the second is $5. They sounded like a fine idea. Er, I couldn’t resist. Woman writer with whom I’m not familiar, premise reminiscent of CJC and Andre Norton and possibly Spider Robinson’s old bar/saloon. I hope it’s as good as it sounds.
Too lazy (and too much at work) to do the research but if memory serves Ilona Andrews is one of those husband/wife teams who have written some fun stuff; the Kate Daniels series comes to mind.
Sympathies Smartcat. Lyme is a PITA. Took me three rounds of antibiotics to get rid of my worst bout. Luckily I have a doctor who takes Lyme seriously. A lot of them in my area don’t or seem to believe that if one round of pills doesn’t get you feeling better it is all in the patients head! And I live on Cape Cod which is a hotbed of the disease. I’m thinking of making models of deer ticks and selling them with long spikes that people can hammer into them!
Try stuffed ticks with the 2″ quilting pins sold as a set. Pincushions, you see, as well as sympathetic magic models.
Thank you all for your kind words.
Little voo-doo ticks! Great idea! Perhaps I should make some tick whistles to drive them away! Or special clay tick for smashing! Thanks! Definite possibilities.
A friend came up here from Florida to visit family; two weeks after she returned to Florida she developed all the classic symptoms of Lyme. Doctors there refused to even consider anything wrong. She ended up coming back here to get treated which took forever. And yes you can get recurrences. I’ve had two, both of which happened with I was having other relatively minor physical problems, but which my doc. thinks was just too much for my body to handle!
The rosy fingered dawn is calling. A sunny day is in store.
Smartcat, if I were your friend, I’d be taking those lab results from Rhode Island back to Florida with me and shoving them under my doctors’ collective noses. Just because it isn’t indigenous to Florida doesn’t mean you can’t get it.
I had to have a test for Lyme several years ago, because one of the symptoms they described was always being tired….even though I don’t live in an area where Lyme is prevalent, there are other ways to get it than through a deer tick bite, according to the hospital, so they did a test – fortunately negative for Lyme.
I’ve been fortunate in that my primary healthcare professionals have all been younger and they seem to be more open minded. I’m sure there are some pretty stodgy 30-somethings who are physicians, but I haven’t run across those. Perhaps because my healthcare professionals are military, are subject to deployment anywhere in the world, and are also told that their patients could have come from anywhere in the world, they tend to be more comprehensive in their test requests.
I hope your friend is able to convince her doctors that 1) she DOES have Lyme, and 2) that they’re pretty close-minded when they don’t listen to the patient or just dismiss the patient’s concerns out of hand without verifying first. If they’re adamant, then she probably should look for a new healthcare professional and not be shy about telling others of her experience…
All the voodoo tick variations sound like great ideas. And with the spread of ticks due to climate change and expanding exposure to host animals (including human ones) it looks like a growth market.
(I think the stuffed ones would be most appealing)
For those people who want a voodoo tick doll, but aren’t feeling particularly crafty:
http://www.amazon.com/Giant-Microbes-Ixodes-Scapularis-Plush/dp/B004W7OQJS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447695615&sr=8-1&keywords=stuffed+tick
I don’t think it includes a giant set of tweezers, however.
Scary! I have lots of stuffed animals but I don’t think I could cuddle up with a giant tick! Love the voodoo tick idea, though… in miniature.