Musings of a Muddled Male

By Bob Stevens

The Muddled Male

 

Chaotic Mind of an Engineering Insomniac

      It actually started with Ann, my wife.  It was 11:30 PM and I was tired from a long day.  So as soon as Ann started watching a chick flick on the Hallmark channel I slipped off to bed to get some sleep to prepare for the next long day.  One blink and I was snoring....and then it was 2:20 AM and the TV was blaring from the Den where Ann had fallen asleep before her show had ended.  And so, like a dutiful and loving husband, I slipped quietly into the den, turned off the TV, covered Ann so she wouldn't be cold, and went back to bed where I now lay wide awake, staring into the dark; thinking.

 

2:45 AM- I was thinking about water rights and how the maximum flow rate that was allowed by the water right affected the maximum quantity of water that could be pumped during the year without violating the volume portion of the water right.  Let's see now, I need to convert cubic feet per second to gallons per minute and then multiply that times the number of minutes in an hour, the number of hours in a day, and the number of days in a year.  I knew that the last step was to divide the answer by the number of gallons in an acre-foot of water, but it was more than I could juggle in my already tired mind.  I know that my friend the math professor has never met a number he didn't like, and can do complicated math problems in his head, but I needed sleep.  Besides, I think better in spreadsheets.

 

3:15 AM- I was in the middle of designing a mental spreadsheet that would get me the number of acre-feet for various flow rates so that I could create a graphic that would give me a visual of the acre-feet at different flow rates and for different hours of pumping each day.  What I really wanted to do was to go to my computer and just do it, but that is where Ann was sleeping and I didn't want to disturb her, so I just continued designing in my mind.

 

4:00 AM- I had my spreadsheet firmly in mind and was now totally exhausted.  So I rolled over on my left side, pulled my legs up into a semi-fetal position, and prepared to drift off into the sleep I so badly wanted.  Have you ever noticed that if you are awake and trying to sleep on your side with one leg directly on top of the other that the knee and ankle bones of the leg on top press uncomfortably down on the knee and ankle bones of the leg on the bottom?  The same thing happens in reverse if you roll over and sleep on your right side.

 

4:15 AM- I tried sleeping on my back with even worse results.  I couldn't lie with my feet pointing straight up because the blankets pressing down hurt my toes.  And I couldn't turn my feet inward or outward onto their sides while sleeping on my back, because it distorted my hips.  I finally settled on the Egyptian-walking, Hieroglyphic position.  You know, the one where you lie on your side with one leg slightly ahead of the other and both slightly bent at the knee so that in profile you look like you are walking.  That way nothing is pressing down on anything, and now I was certain that I could go to sleep.

 

4:30 AM- while I was laying there trying to sleep I noticed that the heat vent in the ceiling right over our pillows would blow warm air down onto my face when the furnace went on in the middle of the night, and that is probably what had been drying out my mouth while I was sleeping.

 

4:45 AM- by now my dry mouth was giving me heart burn so I got up to sneak a couple of the Tums Ann uses to provide calcium, and while I was up I decided to see if it had snowed, which it hadn't.

 

5:00 AM- While I was laying there in the Hieroglyphic position I began to think that this whole thing was the making of a Muddled Male column, but I would never be able to remember all the things that had been tumbling through my sleepless mind if I didn’t get up and make some notes.  So I got up and went to the Den, got a pen and a note pad, and stood at the bathroom counter in the cold in my underwear and scribbled.

 

5:20 AM- Finally, I told myself, I can go to sleep....and then I began to fret over the fact that tomorrow would begin Daylight Savings and I was going to lose another hour of sleep that I would never recover and now, because I was worrying, I couldn’t go to sleep.

 

And that was why you may have caught me snoozing in Church.  And how was your night?