was being informed that the latest, cutting-edge scientific research has uncovered the following shocking result:

“Boobs make men stupid.”

Well, duh.

Recently I was informed by a person of my acquaintance that, in fact, they “did not believe” that I actually wake up 53 times an hour when I sleep unaided by my CPAP machine.

I was totally distracted for the rest of the day, because I was completely unable to comprehend how that person could have possibly interpreted this as an issue of belief.

Now, sure, if I had said something like, “Whenever I sleep I am awoken once a minute by tiny, winged elves who flutter down and tap me lightly on the forehead while simultaneously ringing The Golden Chime Of Enlightenment in order that I may uplink to the Mother Ship,” I can totally understand them not believing that. Because everyone knows that this process involves tiny, winged Cyborgs, not elves.

But seriously, there were electrodes, and wires, and highly calibrated pieces of Scientific Measuring Equipment, and a trained technician named Ken. It wasn’t like they just sat me down in a room with a random guy who looked at me, rubbed his temples, and then proclaimed, “I declare…that your number is…FIFTY THREE!”

Apparently this particular person doesn’t believe that sleep apnea is actually a true medical condition. “You know, that label was only created in like the last 20 years or so,” they said, in the condescending tone of someone who believes that I have just been unthinkingly caught up in the latest fad, like designer bottled waters or those hideous clogs called Crocs.

Right. Like I’m choosing to attire myself every night in enough contraptions to be assimilated by the Borg for fun-perhaps as a fashion statement or something.

Of course, if I were continuing to practice mindfulness and self-awareness, I might be inspired to ask why I immediately reacted with such defensiveness to this person’s opinion that doesn’t actually mean anything. But, um, I don’t want to, because sarcasm is just so much more fun.

See this?

This is the lovely contraption I now wear to bed at night.

Oh, and not only do I get to wear that, I also get to wear a mouthpiece that we around here affectionately refer to as, “The Beaver Teeth”, which keeps me from clenching my jaw at night.

Fetching, no?

But even though every time I put this on I feel sort of like a criminal who is so dangerous they must be kept in face restraints at all times (a la Hannibal Lecter), I don’t care.

Because…

Are you ready for this?

I. Now. Sleep. At. Night.

It is a MIRACLE!!

There really are no words to describe it, except THANK YOU.

Ironically, just as I was in the middle of writing yesterday’s post I got a phone call from the nurse. I was really excited to hear what she had to say, which unfortunately turned out to be: a whole lot of nothing.

After an awful lot of hemming and hawing, she told me that my sample had been located, and it had been analyzed, but no one was allowed to know what the report said.

So apparently I was wrong; my poo was not on the run. It was actually in the witness protection program.

Apparently the secrets it contains are so valuable to some (what was the effect of the drug on my illness) and so dangerous to others (actually, dangerous to the same people, as apparently releasing any information about my sample would unblind the study, thus causing the earth to crash into the sun and bringing the end of life as we know it) that it is being highly guarded in a secure, secret location. And I don’t have a high enough security clearance to have any further contact with it.

Well alrighty then. Now I understand how Sydney Bristow felt when the FBI wouldn’t tell her how they were planning on taking down SD-6.

because I spent last night in a sleep lab doing a sleep study. Because when it comes to sleep, mostly I don’t.

This is not anything new-for as long as I can remember, I haven’t been able to sleep. But even though it seems sort of obvious now, it took me all of these 35 years to realize that I could get help for this, so that one day I might eventually reach the astonishing place of actually being able to sleep at night.

So I got scheduled for a sleep study, and the day finally arrived, and yesterday I was so anxious that at any moment I expected to vibrate right out of my skin, plus I had so much trouble taking in air that I was actually panting, BECAUSE OF ALL THE RANDOM STRANGERS WHO WERE GOING TO BE WATCHING ME SLEEP!!

It turned out to be only one random stranger, who was actually a very nice gentleman named Ken. Ken had me and my husband watch a little video on sleep apnea, then my husband left and Ken told me to take some time to relax. Apparently this “down time” was preparation for the fact that I was shortly to take on the appearance of a science experiment gone horribly wrong. I had wires going down under all my clothes to my legs, bands across my chest and stomach, something plastic sticking up my nose and in my mouth, a pulse monitor clipped to my index finger, and electrodes covering just about every square inch of my head.

As a matter of fact, between the sleep study and the clinical trial I was in for the C DIF drug, I’m pretty sure that the only information about my body that hasn’t been documented somewhere for all posterity is the rate at which I accumulate lint in my belly button.

So I thought I was all ready to go, but then it was time for Ken to tell me a bedtime story. It had to do with Reggie White and sleep apnea. I think the point of the story was that if I had a significant weight change in either direction, then I needed to come back in to get my treatment adjusted.

But it’s entirely possible that this was yet another test, because the story pretty much went, Reggie White, got treated for sleep apnea, retired from football, yada yada yada, AND THEN HE DIED OF A MASSIVE HEART ATTACK. As in, “Not only have I made it physically impossible for you to get comfortable, now I will mess with your mind. Let’s see you sleep now, bitch, Mwa ha ha ha ha!!”

Astonishingly, I did actually fall asleep long enough for them to collect the information they needed to determine my treatment. So they sent me home, and I stumbled into the house at 7 this morning only to find that the cats had chosen to express their anguish at my absence by attempting to set a world record through barfing 11 times in the 12 hours I was gone. Plus my head is covered in sticky white electrode adhesive, making me feel like perhaps I accidentally got drunk last night and decided it would be a great idea to style my hair with an entire package of cream cheese.

To quote one of my favorite bloggers, Mighty Maggie,

GAH!

While watching the Science Channel TV show entitled, “Most of Our Universe is Missing“, I learned the following helpful model which explains how the composition of the Universe breaks down.

5% is composed of atoms

21% is composed of “dark matter”, which no one can prove exists

and the remaining 75% is composed of “dark energy”, which no one actually understands

Now this is the kind of math that I can totally get behind, math which basically says “Um, yeah, we don’t actually know so…let’s just go with ‘magic’.”

So, thanks so much, World’s Top Cosmologists, but could I just make one, tiny suggestion? The next time you need to come up with a model which basically rests upon The Presumption Of Magical Particles, hows about you just come to me first? I’m way less expensive than launching satellites into space and can come up with just as magical a solution, and then with all that money we’ve just saved we can apply ourselves to some important issues here on earth. Such as convincing the CW not to cancel Veronica Mars before we learn whether or not Logan and Veronica can ever work out all their problems and become the happy, stable, staying-together-forever kind of couple that we are looking for in our television viewing. (And yes, I AM bitter!!)

Just a thought.

AKA, “Why I Majored In Spanish”.

“We get to answer the question of whether or not the Universe is one day just going to collapse. That’s the fun of this project.”

-a scientist on the TV show entitled, “Most of Our Universe Is Missing”