I am so tired this morning. I won’t lie: I will be taking a long morning nap. I walked the floors last night, in what I can only describe as my own slapstick episode of the Keystone Cops. I blame my tinnitus. I blame a phone app. And I blame Suzanne. I blame everything and everyone except me.
Here’s what happened: I fell asleep the minute my head hit the pillow, so my night of rest started out just as it should have. I woke up a couple of hours later to the sound of water running. I got out of bed and walked through all the rooms on the second floor, pressing my ear to the walls, listening for running water. I could hear it everywhere and nowhere. I figured it was just my tinnitus acting up extra loudly, so I went back to bed. But the sound soon woke me up again. I investigated further and discovered the sprinklers were on outside, so that must be the culprit I was hearing. Back to bed again, I went. I wasn’t asleep for very long when the sound of water running seemed to get even louder. I looked out the windows—front and back—and saw that the sprinklers were off. I cursed my tinnitus, but I still wasn’t completely convinced I there wasn’t water running somewhere in the house. There was something not quite tinnitus-y about what I was hearing. I went downstairs to listen to all the walls I had not listened to yet. I was coming up with no answers. Finally, I crept back upstairs to try to ignore the water-water-everywhere-that-wasn’t-really-there, so I could get some shut-eye. It was 4:30 AM. The stoopid tinnitus in my head was real. The sound of water running was real, too, I tell you! I flew out of bed yet again, more determined than ever to locate the watery culprit that was causing me to lose sleep. I got down on my hands and knees while I listened to the bedroom floor. If the sound wasn’t in the walls, it had to be in the floor. And that’s when I heard the sound I was able to follow to the source. I slithered my way around the side of the bed to Suzanne’s bedside steamer trunk, upon which was her phone. Apparently, she’d had difficulty falling asleep and had decided to use her relaxation app to play water sounds to help her drift off to sleep. If I had only known! I can sleep to water sounds, if I know they are not doing water damage. It was the worry, not the sounds themselves, which had me on edge. Must. Sleep. Now.