Sleep optional

The rough seas were rough.  I didn't sleep at all during the roller coaster ride.  And that was the first night after off-load.  So I was tired.  But sleep didn't come.  I don't generally sleep very well to begin with, but when bone weary I can usually crash.  The point is that after not sleeping two nights ago, I worked a steady sixteen hours in the freezer hold.  I only had 4 breaks all day.  Three of them were scheduled breaks.  One of which was lunch.  The freezers were synched well.  Bummer.

So after 36 hours of no sleep and 16 in the hold, I got a chance to hit the rack.  I hit it like George Foreman.  No shower.  No ceremony.  I don't remember if I brushed my teeth and I think I opened my book.  It was the perfect storm of sleep.  Fortunately, it was the only perfect storm in the vicinity.  I had a monumental caffeine crash, sleep deprivation, and a long day of work all working together to vorm sleep Voltron.  There were no dreams.  There wasn't even really a sensation of time passing.  I can tell, in most cases, within an hour or so how long I've been out.  This was like going into surgery.  I layed down and woke up wondering if we were done yet.

I woke up had to re-boot.  It was like one of those old computers with the dos prompt?  When you went through a bunch of check ups and things just to get it going and it took a couple minutes?  Or maybe like in Terminator 2 when Arnold got taken out and came back but had to restart and was all jumbled.  Whatever it was like, I was a blubbering idiot for a full fifteen minutes, trying to be quick witted but just spitting out nonsense.  So I'm sure it was funny in it's own way, but we weren't laughing at the same time.  If we stay with the computer analogies, I wasn't in sleep mode.  I was shut down and the battery was drained fully.

I also tried to describe my sleep as being like you read about.  "Damn, I slept like you read about last night."  Well, I've never heard about sleep being editorialized the way I did it.  So hear we are.  Someone can read about it.  Michael Jackson slept like I did on his drip.  And I probably wasn't far from the final shutdown.  I have never been out like that before.  And they woke me up after only six hours so it wasn't a gentle and natural wakeup-that in this case would have happened 12 hours later-but a cessation of rest period.  And back to the freezer.  I haven't showered yet.  I used my finger to brush my teeth this morning so maybe I did try to brush my teeth last night and lost the brush.  It's a mystery.  In many cases sleep is optional.  Last night it was not.