Diary #347

The days are getting longer and warmer already; I’m not turning my lamp on until 5 PM now, and a couple of days ago I took the second blanket off of my bed after several episodes of waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat.  I’m able to wear lighter clothes with a coat as long as I know I’m going someplace warm, and at least this isn’t New Orleans where the end of freezing cold weather means the arrival of oppressively hot weather; in Seattle, it’ll still be cool until June unless we get another crazy heat wave like we did last April.  And of course, in just a few weeks we’ll be subjected to the idiotic annual ritual in which we all agree to lie about what time it is for the next eight months.  What all this means is that, while my friends with Seasonal Affective Disorder are beginning to get some relief, I’m heading into the dreadful days where my pineal gland starts engaging in the neurochemical equivalent of running around the house, turning on all the lights and cranking up the stereo full-blast while screaming obscenities, scattering its clothes all over the floor, losing the car keys, making an unholy mess in the kitchen and refusing to do its homework.  And that in turn means I’ll need to become much more assiduous in my rotation of sleep-inducing drugs again; in the winter I’ve been able to be kind of lazy about it, but now I’ll need to up the doses and mind that I don’t get too resistant to any one thing for it to be useful any more.  Such is the life of a neuro-atypical person, or at least the part of it I can discuss in polite company without giving anyone the vapors or causing nightmares which will ruin their sleep.