The Raven's Roost

The icon is an anti-icon because I actually haven't had insomnia in a long while, and I even got enough sleep last night! I managed to finish all my nightly chores--prepping for breakfast tomorrow (cook fish, set rice in the rice cooker to cook overnight), make lunch, exercise, clean up a bit, take a shower, check on Laila and make sure she's sleeping--by 10:45 p.m., and then I read for a bit and lights went out by 11 p.m. My watch tells me I got three hours of deep sleep and six and a half hours of quality sleep, all of which ended when Laila took a flying leap onto mama and abba while we were both sleeping. I was in the middle of a dream about...something. I don't remember it anymore. That's pretty standard for me now.

"When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key to the gate of dreams."
-H.P. Lovecraft, The Silver Key

I used to have dreams that stuck with me for hours, at least long enough to write them down, and some that remained no matter what. I still remember recurring dreams from my childhood, like the one where I was in a cabin on a peninsular cliff over a raging ocean under a clear blue sky, or the one where my friends and I were hunting vampires through a weird dream version of my hometown. Now I basically can't remember any dreams at all. I had already forgotten most of the details of my dream within a few minutes of waking up and now I can't remember anything. sashagee tells me that sometimes I'll be thrashing around and muttering and she'll wake me up and I'll thank her and fall back asleep and I have no memory of any of this ever happening.

I used to have real trouble falling asleep in any reasonable amount of time but waking up to take care of Laila fixed that. Now I can fall asleep usually in fifteen minutes or so--not as much as my father or my sister, who are "head hits the pillow and lights out" people, but still way better than the thirty-minutes to an hour of previous. My worst night ever I lay in bed for seven hours until eventually giving up, but nothing like that happens anymore. On the other hand, I don't remember my dreams anymore either, and I wonder if the two are connected? Looking it up it should be the other way around--poor sleep quality is connected to fewer dreams--so maybe I just need to put a journal next to my bed or grab my phone and jot down notes if I have any dream memories on waking up. That's hard when nowadays we're usually woken up by a very enthusiastic Laila though, but it should at least be worth trying.