It’s hard to believe when I look at the calendar that I somehow managed to go nearly a week without writing here! It’s been a hell of week so I guess that’s not too big of a surprise. I’ve been dealing again with the whole insomnia thing and I had finally decided that despite my best attempts to fix it myself that I would go and get some sleeping pills to help force myself to sleep on a different schedule for a few nights thinking that eventually everything would just call into place. It’s a battle that is just as much one of guilt as it is one with sleep. Part of me just feels guilty staying up at night and going to bed at 7am and sleeping all day. It doesn’t matter when I sleep or when I’m awake since I work with my own self created schedule anyway. But regardless, for my husband’s sake, I thought I’d give this a try.
So off we went to CVS to look for something and at first I had the hardest time finding them and when I did I was very overwhelmed by the number of “sleep aids” available. I’ve tried many of the herbal ones like Midnite and Sleep MD but they don’t work for me. I always like the good old generic stuff that just says SLEEPING PILLS, or something to that effect, in big blue letters across a stark white bottle. But I was being easily swayed by pretty packaging and fancy names for things and found myself holding 3 or 4 different packages and my husband all but pushing me toward the pharmacy counter to ask for help.
Finally I give in and go for help. A woman comes to the window to ask how she can help and I dump all the boxes I’m holding on the counter and just say, point blank, “I’m confused and don’t know which one I should take.” The woman tells me she’s going to get someone else to come and help and soon a young pharmacy intern comes over to help. She was really nice but seemed to also be a bit overwhelmed by the boxes I’d tossed on the counter. As she’s looking at them, on in particular grabbed her attention and it was the one that I was also favoring. She farrows her brow as she reads the back of the box and then laughs.
Ok, now they’re laughing at me, this can’t be good! But the girl says “Just take Benadryl.”
“Really?” I asked, now looking confused myself.
“Sure, all this stuff is is Tylenol and Benadryl so you might as well just take Benadryl. 25mg of plain Benadryl about 30 minutes before bed should do it just make sure you have time for 8 hours or so to sleep.”
I say OK, I’ll give that a try but I’m walking away not convinced. So I put the boxes back except for the one that she was looking at and that I was thinking of getting. We go over to the allergy medicine area and grab a box of 25mg Benadryl and sure enough the active ingredient in the Benadryl was the same as that in the box of sleeping pills and both were 25mg. The kick in the pants here was that a 24 dose box of Benadryl was $5.99 versus the $14.99 box of 24 sleeping pills. And as we’re grabbing the box of Benadryl my husband notices there’s a $2 off “use it now” coupon on the box. So for $3.99 I walk out with Benadryl to use not as allergy meds, but to get some sleep.
Let me now say, for the record, that girl at the pharmacy counter of CVS was right! The first night I took it I slept like the dead, so much so that in the morning I had a hard time getting out of bed and waking up. The second time I took it it knocked me out faster than the first time but I woke up a bit easier in the morning. Still, this hasn’t gotten me back on track but if I know I really need to sleep and not go to bed wishing for sleep on a wing and a prayer, Benadryl all the way!
Other than that, it’s been a week of playing catching up. I had to complete all the final work for my Witchcraft 1/First Degree work with Christopher Penczak and today I found out I passed! Now I’m on to Witchcraft 2 and I’m falling behind already, sadly, with the reading. I’m declaring this weekend a weekend of reading. It’s only 100 pages I need to get through but then I have to do work for it; it’s just the reading that gets me hung up because I get so easily distracted.
And speaking of distractions, my husband gave me the ultimate distraction last Tuesday which has been contributing to my lack of blogging and tweeting; Left 4 Dead 2 for the Xbox. I am actually getting ready to head off for a little break from working to play a bit. I feel like it’s OK because I did take the time to write up two Thanksgiving related articles over at Examiner.com. You check out this one about the Pagan connection to Thanksgiving and this one about Mabon (yeah, it’s a little late in the year for Mabon but only technically and to my credit I didn’t start at Examiner.com until this month). I also talked to Ed Hubbard from WitchSchool today about helping him with some writing and editing for his coverage of the Parliament of the World’s Religions and I have a feeling when that starts up I wont be doing much zombie killing for a bit.
So on that note, I’ll be back later with a tarot review, an oracle review, half of a book review (ok well some comments about a book I’m reading), and I’ll be getting back to the Fairy Tale Tarot…no, I haven’t forgotten it! 
Mood: productive (for the most part)
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