Jet Lag 4, Ricardo Eduardo 0

11.18.09

Dragging ourselves through CDG Airport

La Cala del Moral

I truly am getting too old to do this! A  trip back to the US…don’t sleep at all for 2 weeks… Jet Lag 1, Ricardo Eduardo 0.  A long flight back to Spain for a week, can’t sleep more than 3-4 hours at a time…need to prepare to go back to the US…Jet lag 2, Ricardo Eduardo 0. Fly back to the US for a week…again, 3-4 hours of sleep at a time, just get back to a full night’s sleep and its time to go home…Jet Lag 3, Ricardo Eduardo 0. Arrive at home FINALLY…2 days at home to do laundry, pack and a 3 hour drive to Sevilla to catch a flight  to Morocco…Final Score Jet Lag 4, Ricardo Eduardo 0.

Man, what a month! I don’t think I have ever been so wiped out, for so long, as I have been in this past month. Sleeping through the night has never been a problem for me…ever. I lay my head down and BAM, it’s morning time…no problem. When I was travelling quite a bit for work, I would leave SJO at 10:30 PM, arrive in New York or Philadelphia or Pittsburgh at 6:30 AM and be ready to go for a 2-3 day meeting, no problem. Time changes, sleeping on airplanes, airport food, no problem. Well this has been a different experience for old Ricardo Eduardo.

I have never had serious insomnia but now have an appreciation for those poor folks who do. I think the worst part of jet lag, or insomnia for that matter, is that you are tired…I mean really tired, and the feeling you get when you finally are able to lay down is amazing…the soft sheets, the quiet, the warm bed, the heavy eyes. It’s all a dream until you wake up, check your watch, and find that you have been sound asleep for …well exactly 15 minutes! I swear, I thought I had slept all night. I get up expecting to see the sun up, smell the coffee in the kitchen, let the dog out…I check my watch and I’ve only been asleep for 15 minutes.

OK…no problem,  so just lay back down and close your eyes …relax…did I remember to turn off the light in bathroom back home? WHAT..who cares!!! Go to sleep. OK one-one thousand, two-one thousand…Oh, I have to remember to call the caterer in the morning to remind her to…it goes on and on like this for 5 hours until I simply give up, get up, and read a book, or wash the floor, or add that extra lane to highway 85..anything to take my mind off the fact hat it’s 12:30 AM and I am wide a flipping awake.

"I'm Going Back to Sleep" Says Abby

So the next night, I follow the advice of one of my sister’s friends…”don’t hesitate, medicate.”  So I pop a couple of Advil PMs and whammo, I am fast asleep…for 4 hours this time. Better, but still not what I am looking for. Are there any 24 hour bookstores around as I have finished all my required reading for the next year! I know it’s bad when, as I mull around the kitchen, the dog comes out, stretches, looks at me with a look that says “Dude, it’s the middle of the night, why are you awake?” She looks at me, kind of tilts her head curiously, and then goes back to sleep. Man’s best friend all right! As along as man doesn’t keep waking up in the middle of the night.

 If the nights are bad, and they are, when you have jet lag, the days can be even worse. So it’s 2:00 PM, the sun is up, you have plans to meet with XXX to discuss the YYY. You greet your appointment and get started when WHAM, your head starts spinning and it is all you can do to keep from falling face first into your Starbucks triple foamy thing. The way the intense fatigue can suddenly overcome you is amazing and would be really interesting to study, if it wasn’t happening to ME. I don’t care how many Starbucks triple foamy things you pound down, you can’t keep the “closed-eye monster” from sneaking up on you.

As I was driving to my sister’s house the other night at say 10:00 PM, the “monster” climbed over the back seat and literally pulled my eyes shut. Now it’s only 20 minutes to her house and I was wide awake when I left, but I had to stop twice in 20 minute to get out and walk around the car to stay awake. No matter how hard I tried, I could not keep my eyes focused on the road. I am sure that I should not have been driving as it felt like I was dreaming about the drive a couple of times.  I make it to her house and , exhausted, I crawl into bed.  2 hours later, I am out adding a porch onto the side of their house…wide awake at 12:30 PM after almost killing my self from falling asleep at the wheel 2 hours ago. What is up with that?

Catching up on 2 weeks of homework...on the flight home!

So it’s bad enough when you have jet lag…it’s worse when the whole family gets it! When we came back from the US on our last trip, we had 2 days at home before we left for a 4 day trip to Morocco. Neither Laura or I slept a wink on the flight home (too many French films to watch I guess.) So when we get back, we are all cranky. The kids were simply awful, bless their little jet-lagged hearts. Laura and I turned from Mr. & Mrs Cleaver to Nightmare on Elm St. We bickered, and the kids cried, and we do “huffy breaths” at each other. It was not a pleasant couple of days.

Well we made it through and got off to Morocco with one last melt down from Riley outside of the Hotel in Seville where the flight left from early on Thursday AM. apparently the fact that the Pizza restaurant was closed at 7:30 PM (and would not even open for another hour and a half) so we couldn’t have pizza for dinner pushed her over the edge. Oh, the injustice of it all! The world has conspired against poor little Riley..again! On the sidewalk in front of the closed pizza restaurant, sobbing, her head spins around a few times just like in the Exorcist…because we can’t have Pizza for dinner? We don’t see a Catholic church nearby where we could get a quick exorcism, so instead, we dragged her sobbing self back to the hotel so we could get some sort of food in her before she vomitted green stuff and collapsed into bed. I would have liked to gotten mad at her but I can completely understand how she felt. Simply put, jet lag sucks… ask Riley and she’ll tell you so!

Now it’s been a week since we made it back home for good and the effects of all this time-zone skipping  travel are beginning to sloooooowly wear off. I think that we are all getting back to a more regular schedule and the late nights / early mornings have seem to resolved themselves…Thank the Great Spirit. I am not sure how to avoid the problems associated with jet lag but I wish there were a cure. So this time the final score is Jet Lag 4. Ricardo Eduardo 0 but I want a re-match!