One thing I have envied among several of my DH's admirable traits is his ability to drop off to sleep quite quickly. Once he decides to sleep, he folds his hands on his forehead for a few moments of prayer, then arranges himself on his back with his fingers neatly interlaced on his chest or lies on one side. The next thing you know, he is off gamboling among the sheep on the grassy meadows in the land of Nod. It doesn't bother him even if the light is on or there is a panchari melam going on outside our window. He prefers having at least a night light on and music playing in the background as he drops off to sleep.
In fact, this was one bone of contention in the early days of our marriage. I need pitch darkness and absolute silence to relax and sleep. After my prayers, I first have to lie on my right side, rest a few moments and then turn to the other side before I can drop off to sleep. Even then the goddess of sleep is very picky about granting her boon to me. "Going to bed after 11 p.m.? Toss and turn for half an hour!" she will curse with glee. "Couldn't put the book down till midnight before courting me, eh? Lie there, listening to the night sounds for one more hour," she will chortle. And if I watch a horror movie any time of the day? She will flounce off altogether, allowing all the horrendous characters of the movie to lurk in the corners of our bedroom, staring at me with glowing coals that are their excuse for eyes. And I will be left, clutching a slumbering DH's slack hand for reassurance and chanting the ten names of Arjuna to keep me safe from fear. She is so fickle that sometimes, even without any reason, she will just refuse to appear.
So it was with great surprise that we both noticed that DH was lying awake for long stretches in the third month of the lockdown. He started complaining of very fitful sleep. He also complained of getting up several times during the night. One night, I got up to find him on the living room sofa, watching a football game's highlights on his phone. "Hey, that is my thing!" I told him, meaning the vigil on the sofa, of course, not watching football. I don't do anything except read on my sleepless nights.
I put it down to the stress of the times. After all, he is snowed in with work and absolutely misses our trips to his family and traveling in general. He also misses not going to the theaters to watch movies. I thought that all that was playing havoc with his peace of mind. DH is a great worrier even in normal times. But even in periods of greater stress than this, I had never seen him lose his sleep. Soon, his sleeplessness affected me too. Even though I religiously kept to an early bed time, turned myself as per my schedule, etc., I too lay sleepless. I tried to blame my sleeplessness on the new extra-bright LED streetlight that had been newly affixed near our gate and even plotted throwing a stone at it.
But last Monday morning, I was practicing Sudarshan Kriya when it suddenly came to me. (This has become a somewhat regular occurrence of late - I get ideas and solutions while doing Kriya or Sahaj Samadhi meditation). The brainwave was this: our bedroom is being affected by too much work energy! When the lockdown started, DH started working in our living room. Gradually, he started shifting to the bedroom post lunch because he wanted to leave the living room free for the kids to watch TV. Our younger one, would initiate the "transfer protocol" the moment he finished his lunch by carrying DH's laptop and other accessories to the bedroom without being told, so that he could start watching TV that much earlier.
Even when June rolled around, online classes started and our kids' TV watching was restricted to after 9 pm, DH was still shifting work to the bedroom after lunch. Understandably, his shifting guy now had to be asked to help each day! The hunch that I got was that all that work was destroying the relaxing atmosphere of our bedroom, robbing us of our sleep. Therefore, I asked DH to remain in the living room the whole day instead of working in the bedroom.
I am very glad to report that DH and I have been sleeping much better since the change. The first few nights were still rather restless ones, but there has been definite improvement. So much so that I have decided that the new street light will be safe from me for the time being. So if any of you have a bedroom doing double-shift as a home office and find yourselves having trouble sleeping, try working from another room and banish all work-related paraphernalia from the bedroom. Wait at least a week or two to see if it works!
Last Saturday, Chunchu and Pirate, our visiting cats brought us some more company and introduced them to the food bowl at Karthi!
They were both predominantly white, with little to distinguish between them at first glance. In a textbook case of inverted racism, I lamented the fact that we never seemed to get kittens or cats with more color to them than this "boring white". The cat family left and then came back with a new addition!!!
The white kitties have a brother!!! We promptly named him Jack after Susan Branch's kitty who appears regularly on her blog. So one of his sisters simply had to be Jill! The other sister has slightly longer hair fluffed out all around her, so we named her Fluffy. Just look at the three posing near our sanitiser bottle!!!
Here is Fluffy trying to climb our screen when our Lab Goldie made her first appearance in their lives! As usual, on her evening run, Goldie tried to come up the porch steps to meet us, but Chunchu and Pirate blocked her at the top of the steps and hissed and swiped at her. Goldie could easily dispatch both with a lash of her tail, but our goofy Lab beat a strategic retreat rather than get a scratched nose.
Aww, aren't they cute??? Please feel free to gush over the overload of cuteness! Pirate is quite nonchalant about her brood. And we are so happy that we have got to see Akrami's grandkids!
All three kitties have already learned that the kitty bowl at Karthi is always stocked up with snacks. All day yesterday they rushed in whenever they heard the front door open to restock on food after all the combat practice they put in together. Even today morning, all three rushed in by themselves! For the time being, our garage is their home.
Already they are exhibiting unique characteristics. Fluffy, as you have seen, is scared easily. Jack is always looking for nooks to explore and Jill is feisty. She played football with our elder son, talked back at DH when he refused to allow her to jump up on the sofa and sat calmly for a few moments in my hand and looked me directly in the eyes before indicating that she would like to get down. Her siblings were pure scrambling panic when I picked them up. Jack has two little white mittens and knee socks on his hind legs as well as a white shirt front and pink nose. He is so adooooorable!
Be advised, if they like Karthi enough to stay, there will be more kitty pictures coming your way!
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