The creepy crawly in me

When does going to the loo in the middle of the night become an adventure? When you are extremely careful not to wake the sleeping husband. When the ancient wooden floors resonate creaks with every move. When the bathroom door makes it's typical whine as it eases open. When the light switch in the bathroom also sets off the exhaust fan. Ah so many parameters... which make the simple act of a midnight loo break into some bizarre game. And typically I have found a foolproof strategy. But of course, there are steps involved. And most of them involve creeping around in the dark and pausing to hear supersonic sounds. And once you're done, you can allow yourself a sigh of relief for a game, well-played as you tuck back into sleep. And if the husband is awake and only pretending to sleep? Well... he gets an eyeful of you looking extremely stupid creeping around in the dark in your own home.

Yup-pee

Ah well, I've avoided writing about this because it's not something you necessarily want to write about. But I figured almost everyone has been confronted with this situation, probably a lot of times in their lives - the urge to pee and with no available loo around. It happens in the most inconvenient of situations of course... long drives, longer journeys, mehendi (henna tattoo) on your hands, you name it... And once you find that elusive loo after what felt like your bladder might burst, the literal relief is probably the most palpable form of relief that one can feel. It's like all your tensions ease away (other than the literal tension of the bladder muscles loosening up). Back in India it never happened... maybe because I was subconsciously aware that the public latrines were best avoided. And ever notice how when you have to pee, that's like the top-most thing on your mind? You can't stop thinking about the fact that you have to go. Like all the other times when you don't, you are not even remotely thinking about the loo or anything in it's whereabouts. I can't remember the number of times that I have literally calculated the minutes to the nearest usable loo in such situations and coaxed myself that yes, I can make it and I won't pee in my pants. But gosh.. once or twice I didn't think I'd make it. I remember once when I had to return from renting a car here in Paris, I couldn't find parking near the house (of course you've read my woes on parking. You haven't??? Here you go!) and I'd had like 3 million gallons of water before going to pick up the car (I neither anticipated wanting to pee nor the lack of availability of parking - one of my rookie mistakes). And it was pure hell. I finally found parking about 2km away... figured I couldn't hold back from peeing all the way back home... almost considered diving into a café for a fake cup of coffee while really all I wanted to do was to use the toilet... but then reconsidered the option for having to fake niceties, looking at the menu, ordering, drinking more fluid and then going to pee. Instead I decided to keep up the momentum and semi-sprinted back home... only to discover that someone was moving out/in from/to our apartment.. bah, who cares? My apartment's on the ground floor and all I needed was half a foot of clearance to squeeze in, find my door and hop to the bathroom. It wasn't to be. For a frustrating 10 minutes, a huge cabinet blocked my door as the woman in charge apologized profusely and I tried to be as gracious as one can be in the situation... but looked nothing like it, while crossing and uncrossing my feet, making impatient sniffs and finally bolting through the door as if something was on fire. Something was. And two minutes later, I was lighter and relieved. I vowed never to do this to myself ever again.. to use the loo as liberally as required, go even if I didn't have to where there was a clean one available... blah blah. Needless to say, I haven't succeeded and neither was that my last time.

P'urge

For starters, read the title as written... Next, try to understand what I'm talking about. When it comes to falling asleep, I have many many pet peeves. Everything's got to be just right for the miracle of sleep to occur. And anything can be a disturbance. Ask my roommates at UC... whom I used to torture with my supersonic detection of the drip of the tap in the shower. Sometimes they swore that I heard it only because I strained to. And yes, sometimes that was true. I listened hard to see if I really wasn't hearing it and discovered that trying that hard, I could hear it faintly. And once I heard it, it sort of reverberated into this unbearably loud sound that didn't work wonders towards my sleeping. And it isn't like if everything is silent, I can sleep well. Nope. I need the sound of the fan. I've told myself that its not weird and many people have that in common with me. And in San Diego, it was the sound of the garbage truck. Loud and clear... only on Saturdays n Sundays because on other days we'd have left by then. But recently, thanks to my downing bottles n bottles of water, its the urge to pee. The worst part is that I would've peed just before bed and invariably an hour later or less, I would be overcome by this huge feeling that I needed to pee. It wasn't that I had to. but the chilly nights don't help. It was just that the thought that the urge would get stronger in a few hours when I would've managed to sleep well, that I would rather do it right then. I think I have more difficulty than others falling back to sleep once something's woken me up. Crazy, huh? Even crazier, I got the idea for this post from one of my short dreams - title, and all.