Tag Archives: melatonin

I woke up this morning and my body chose violence.

19 Thursday May 2022

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First off, I woke up with a headache. That shouldn’t even be a thing.

Second, I forgot pants. No, I didn’t leave the house without them, I’m pretty sure my Day Job wouldn’t let me get into the building without them. These are unattractive legs. They’re mine, but unattractive.

I realized I forgot to ensure I had clean pants for work. So I sat on the throne (🚽) and “read the news” (but also read the news because smartphones exhaust), just… pantless.

Then, I got up because it was time for The Hubby to “read the news” and I proceeded to drop things. My deodorant into the sink, the box of cotton swabs on to the floor, my shoes. my thought aloud to my spouse were, “is this how my day is gonna go? The universe is telling me it is.”

Honestly it was lucky I took my morning dose of ibuprofen. I’ve taken it every morning for the last few days hoping to minimize foot pain. Aside from everything else on my feet hurting, I’ve be blessed (and I mean that sarcastically) what I believe is plantar fasciitis. Nothing I do helps it, except staying off my feet as much as possible. But guess what? That’s my whole job.

Anyway I make it to work on time-ish. I plan for a productive day, but lo the Remod crew has been hard at work to destroy that which we know so well. Leaving my team (of which I do not lead) to clean up.

Boss works on that while I do other time sensitive tasks. he later asks me ti help with his work, and I commence. Which requires a whole load of bending in picking.

And then it happens.

The Twinge.

A tingling, jarring, unnerving split second of pain. Now the first twinge is nothing. It’s a whisper of what could be. So, as always when I get The Twinge, I stand perfectly still. I think, “is this it? Am I down for the count? Is my life over? Will this be the one that paralyzes me for good?” You know, because anxiety.

So I test the water. There it is again but not quite as there. Subtle. Now is when I think, “this could go one of two ways. Either it goes away never to bother me again… until the next time.” There’s always a next time. They’re just not always close together.

Or. This is the end.

Well, the problem was that I still had a great deal of bending and picking to do. Like a lot. And I was barely two hours into my day. And because I am the type of person to not want to let anyone down because it makes me feel like I’m not doing what I should be doing, I know I will not leave.

Because the last time I injured my back (did I mention this was my back) I was out of work for four days, could not physically move without pain. But I did not get approved for leave from work and I nearly lost my job because my absences were not approved. Apparently leave was not medically necessary.

Horseradish.

So I was not leaving work so I could get in trouble for leaving work. Well I had PPTO so I would have been fine.

But as I told my much younger than me boss: I have been ignoring concerning aches and pains for decades. I’ll be fine.

I made it though my shift. Mostly whining, groaning, and banging non-fragile items on hard surfaces because sometimes you hurt and want to break thinks like you are broken.

I even managed to come home and make a crafty wedding gift.

And now my melatonin has slapped me in the face and is trying to pull down my eyelids. I’ll update tomorrow if I’m able to roll out if the bed tomorrow morning.

Goodnight

-c

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Crystal’s Weird Dreams: Part 9,768

25 Friday Mar 2022

Posted by in Dreams, Non-Fiction

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First

I dreamed that my truck had a message pop up saying my breaks had reached max temperature and needed repairs because they got too hot.

I know why I dreamed that: practically since the day I got my used Dodge Ram, there’s been things wrong with it. First the washer fluid motor didn’t work. Then the second day (I think) the check engine light came on. I bough a reader do dad and it said there was a vapor emissions leak (or something).

In October it had a spell where it didn’t want to start. That ended up beating a battery connector. that’s a whole other blog post which I thought I wrote but cannot find now.

Now there’s a bad fuel injector (thanks always on check engine light). I’m pretty sure it’s been in an accident before. The hood isn’t mounted right, as it rubs the fender when you open it.

I fixed the washer fluid issue myself, it was a bad fuse. The batter connector was replaced the night it messed up. I’m about to order (literally in a few hours) the parts to fix the other two.

So I dreamed about SOMETHING ELSE going wrong, something nonexistent, because there’s already other things wrong that I need to fix.

Second.

I dreamed (after I was woken up at 4am by a devil cramp in my foot & calf muscle) that I was in my dad’s living room but in my house, and my electric heated throw started to spark where the cord plugs into the throw. One of my direct supervisors was there telling me I didn’t plug it in right. All while the throw caught on fire. While it was on me.

I managed to get it unplugged and yeeted it out my front door.

I think I dreamed it because: one, I constantly feel like, at work I’m not doing anything right or fast enough. I was just told yesterday by both direct supervisors that I was doing a thing completely wrong for over a year.

The throw catching on fire? Probably because I go to sleep cold so I have my throw on. But then I wake up an hour later roasting. As if not only did my throw warm me up but the whole room decided that it wanted to be warmer.

Melatonin has always contributed to my wild dreams, luckily there rarely bad, upsetting, or difficult.

Thanks for reading

-c

My Life: A Summary

19 Saturday Mar 2022

Posted by in Random, Truth

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You ever have so many things you want to do but absolutely zero time or energy in which to do them?

Well that is my life. I think willpower has a lot to do with it too. Lately my life feels more or less like every day is the same and nothing ever changes. Because it be like that. It do.

Maybe that’s why it all seems to go so quickly and I have to stop and think, “is it already Friday?”

6:00am: wake up get and ready for work.

6:30am(ish):leave for work.

6:45am: get to work and sit in the parking lot contemplating staying in the truck for 8 hours.

7:06am(ish): clock in and work.

8:30-9:30am: take a 15 at some point. Get Gatorade and peanut M&Ms, 99% of the time.

?-11:50am(ish): do work things (including but not limited to complaining under my breath about the following:

  • Plugging
  • Picks
  • Overstock
  • Modular resets
  • The 9,000 daily tasks I’m expected to do along with the “here this needs done” extra things.

11:50-12:50am: have lunch. Look at funny pictures in my phone for an hour while thinking about how much I could be getting done with the #pretendfantasynovel and blogging and all kinds of stuff.

12:50pm(ish): more work

2:00pm(ish): last break. Whatever man. Talking to coworkers?

4:00-4:30pm(ish): go home. If it’s a week day I pick The Kid up.

Spend the rest of the evening after dinner either wasting my life on the Internet watching videos or looking at funny pictures, wallowing in self-pity, or wishing I could change myself or my life.

8:00pm: begin bedtime routine

  1. Brush my teeth.
  2. Get kid’s teeth brushed.
  3. Go to The Kid’s room.
  4. Melatonin gummy for The Kid (1mg The Kid is a lightweight).
  5. Brush her hair.
  6. Lotion her feet and hands (helps us both relax and she also has the softest feet of any human).
  7. Give The Kid her allergy meds and tummy gummy.
  8. Story time till she falls asleep (almost done with “Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets”).
  9. Sit in The Kid’s bed next to her sleeping form looking at funny pictures or writing this blog post (I’m now editing in my own bed).

9:30-9:40pm(ish): go to my room, contemplate the possibilities of doing something productive. (Actually I’m editing a blog post.)

10:00pm: Realize I’ve spent too much time looking at stupid stuff on the internet, take my melatonin, take my medicine and try to get comfortable in my hard ass bed.

I’m currently completing the editing of this post at 10:28pm. MY melatonin is kicking my butt. Luckily I don’t take it on my days off.

Wake up a million times in the night.

Sometime around 5am my body says “that’s enough” but I ignore it and struggle to go back to sleep.

Do it all over again at 6:00am, usually with some kind of ache and/or pain.

I realize my posts are boring and inconsistent and not helpful to anyone, usually especially me. But this is how I cope with life and what my brain is doing. I’d prefer my brain to nothing most days.

But you know what, I’m not on any kind of medication keeping me from going completely bonkers (though I wouldn’t deny something would help me). I’m also still employed and haven’t run away to live as a hermit in an abandoned building on some unused corner of a reach persons’s sprawling acreage.

That sounds absolutely amazing.

But alas I have responsibilities, The Kid, people who love me and need me, and I still have a fully/mostly functioning conscience. So I’ll continue to perform this never ending dance routine. Even if sometimes it feels more like a backwoods circus sideshow than Cirque Du Soleil.

Goodnight friends. Thanks for watching. What? Watching? What reality are you living in right now…

-c

I never realized how important melatonin has become in getting my child to sleep

29 Saturday Jan 2022

Posted by in Non-Fiction, Opinion Piece

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Until we ran out of her melatonin and I forgot to get more

Crap

So why don’t we learn about melatonin together while we wait for her to fall asleep naturally.

Hey Crystal! Why DO you give you’re Under 10 child Melatonin?

My child has ADHD. Through months of stress and frustration that I won’t go into we decided to see a doctor and she was diagnosed. At some point there will be a detailed post but this ain’t it.

When we put her on medicine for it, we were told that it could cause sleep issues. She’s had them for some time but we’d never seriously considered melatonin or anything of that sort.

We started giving her a 1mg melatonin gummy every night at the beginning of our bedtime routine. At this stage, we have other steps and there’s plenty of time for it to kick in. By the time our routine is complete, sometimes before, she’s out.

She took her last one last night, and I knew very quickly I would regret not picking another container up. So I’m writing this post while I wait impatiently for her to doze off.

Okay that was the back story. What is Melatonin anyway?

According to Wikipedia (that all-knowing website we all use but never donate to) Melatonin is a hormone naturally released at night by the pineal glad (no. The PI-NEE-AL gland, get your mind out the gutter[I will neither confirm nor deny whether I had to Google the pronunciation]). It is known to help regulate the sleep and wake cycle.

I also read a handful of times that it is released by your body when triggered by darkness. Perhaps that’s why it tells you to turn out the lights and put down the screens?

Basically meaning when the release of melatonin is triggered it helps promote a restful and relaxed state so you can fall asleep.

I personally have been using it a few years now. I take a chewable 10mg before I lay down, so I fall asleep easier the night before a workday. I do fall asleep faster.

I also have way weirder dreams.

“Evidence for its benefit for this use, however, is not strong.”

Wikipedia (UH EXCUSE YOU.)

Cool cool. So it’s made by the brain. But wait HOW DO THEY MAKE THE SUPPLEMENT

I’m so glad you asked!

Mm yes you’ll like this

Melatonin supplements can be found in natural and synthetic forms. The synthetic form is created completely in a pharmaceutical lab and is molecularly identical to what your own body produces.

But the natural melatonin supplements are made from the pineal gland of animals. Oh yes. They extract the melatonin from brains of animals.

HORRIFYING. However…

Throughout the last, oh, ten minutes of googling, I tried to search for “natural melatonin supplements”. Most every result only mentioned increasing your melatonin production naturally. So I am assuming that most of not all melatonin supplements on the market today are in fact synthetic.

I have my child’s empty container of melatonin before me. I’m going to email the manufacturer, just to see if they’ll respond, and ask them how this particular melatonin is made. This post will be updated in the text box below if they respond.

Thank the LORT she’s finally asleep.

It only took, like, an hour. She’s honestly been asleep for like fifteen minutes I was just so wrapped up in this post that haven’t stopped.

Yes, I wrote this post to soothe my mind while my child soothed herself without being dosed extra melatonin that her body did not produce. Come to think of it if she weren’t scared of the dark she might sleep easier.

Anyway, my very limited research skills have provided me with some entertainment. And my day job influenced me to Google how Melatonin supplements were made months ago. So I already knew that part.

Also the number of people who firmly believe the use of vitamins and supplements will cure them or keep them from getting sick at all is absolutely terrifying and depressing. The human race’s reliance on supplements might be getting out of hand, especially due to the current state of affairs *cough* pandemic *cough*.

Yes. They are useful and helpful and some people truly need some of these. And I advocate and encourage the use of a daily multivitamin (equate women’s daily for YEARS) for most everyone I talk to. But there are an alarming number of supplements sold in stores that are NOT regulated or tested by the FDA. Always keep that in mind.

And with this I’ll leave you!

Thanks for reading!

-c

“Can you tell me where the melanoma is?”

That one customer like 7 or 8 years ago. Pretty sure she was looking for melatonin.