Context: I currently have a back injury and as such my sleep schedule has been destroyed. There are days that I simply cannot get comfortable no matter where I sit/lie.
The other night I was restless and couldn’t get comfortable but was feeling tired. I wanted to brew myself a cup of tea but as luck would have it we had run out of fill-able tea bags. I pulled out the metal tea infusers and found that due to an improper cleaning at last use and who knows how long they had been sitting idle they were absolutely disgusting. Some had mold spots and one appeared to be rusting (how aluminum rusts I don’t know).
I REALLY wanted my tea so I busted out my cleaning tools and got to work. She woke up to use the restroom and heard me in the kitchen and made it a point to call me out for being weird and that no one in their right mind would be doing what I was doing.
Is that a fair assessment? I only spent about 50 minutes cleaning them.
Read the headline: yes mate, she is.
Read the post: Perfectly understandable, carry on.
I love this take.
Thank goodness it’s not just me. Reading the post had me like “well yeah, obviously, what else can you even do in that situation?” You gotta get the strainers clean once you know they aren’t. It’s basically the law.
Doing something productive when you can’t sleep is, like, the most normal thing you can do. You’re fine.
Right! My one concession to here (loving) statement is that my ideas of productive can often lean towards the absurd.
Yes, I am handplaning bowling alley floor for a desk at 11:30 at night… why do you ask?
So you’ve stumbled into ADHD through the side door eh?
Chronic pain actually can cause similar symptoms to adhd lol
It may not be normal necessarily, but it’s completely understandable. You wanted a comfort while you were uncomfortable, and you were willing to work for that comfort.
Fifty fucking minutes of cleaning for a cuppa?
I do all sorts of things at 3am too, thanks to my awful circadian rhythm. As long as it wasn’t you who woke her, you can do what you want. Awake is awake, no matter the time of day. Just be mindful of your surroundings.
I may or may not occasionally get super fixated on tasks I’m doing. The only reason I know it was fifty minutes was because I listened to the entire Sleep Token album “This Place Will Become Your Tomb”.
You can bet your ass that those steepers are nice and shiny clean.
Ever been diagnosed with ADHD?
Nope, my family was never really financially stable and we lived next door to a nurse (extreme luck) for small cuts and bruises/illnessess, so the only time I ever actually saw a doctor was for wisdom teeth and a freeway speed car accident that broke a bunch of my bones.
I only recently at the young old age of 32 got insurance that actually covers anything, but old habits die hard so doc visits of any kind are kind of taboo in my brain.
Fair enough. Sucks that we live in a society where we can’t get healthcare by default.
Anyway Hyperfocus is one of a number of ADHD symptoms. I got diagnosed in my 40s
Avoiding docs is one major reason my friend died recently in his 50s. Undiagnosed blood pressure and cholesterol led to heart failure.
It’s hard to break those habits for sure.
I mean there is being restless and there is being loud and starting a project at 3am.
I’m not saying you’ve done a bad thing here but yeah you are blurring trust line of weird behavior.
Not normal? Sure.
But it’s also not normal to have a back injury that prevents you from sleeping.
So if you can use your sleep time to do something productive that helps you, that may not be normal (IE common) but it is a good idea.It’s not normal, but it’s not not normal.
It is not typical, expected behavior by most peoples’ standards, partly because the majority of people at that time of night are sleeping.
You’d be hard pressed to find support for this as being normal behavior. What’s important is whether or not normal matters? If it’s considered criticism, why? Is she being awoken by your behavior? If so, then that’s probably warranted. Otherwise, if it’s just a characterization of what you’re doing, so what?
Tbh, if it was my partner doing it, I can see myself saying that even if it didn’t cause me to wake up. Only, its not to criticise, but just to tease them.
Yeah, maybe she meant it as in OP should visit the doctor another time. But it’s also quite possible, she simply couldn’t make the link that OP is awake due to pain.
Dude, dremels are loud. Don’t use them while people are sleeping
In my defense the kitchen is as far from the bedroom as you can get in our apartment and it’s an variable speed electric so you can run it relitively slow for (again, relatively) quite operation.
Can confirm, low speed Dremel isn’t loud, especially from another room. 👍
You are not in a normal situation so how can it be normal? Normal activity if you’re awake. And you’re awake.
Lack of sleep can make you do weird things. It’s not keeping anyone wake, it’s not hurting you or anyone. Enjoy your tea.
A dremel is not a quiet tool. Don’t they spin at some obscene RPM?
Depends, some have adjustable rpm. Still they usually aren’t to quiet, but when the partner doesn’t wake up by the sound, I see no problem.
If you have back pain this may not be the right activity for you. Scrubbing g while bend over a sink. I don’t care about the time but the activity doesn’t help your injury.
Absolutely understood but when you are uncomfortable sitting in any position, or lying down, again, in any position, sometimes standing is the only option.
It probably would have been weirder if she came out and just saw me quietly standing in the middle of the room.
May I suggest light yoga. Something like sun salutation I have back issues too and this have helped a lot.
I’ll avoid the word normal, but definitely not something most people would ever do. (It’s the sort of thing I might do though.)
Obviously I don’t know the details of your back pain, but I would caution you that doing stuff like that (focusing intently on something in front of you, possibly bending over slightly, for an extended period of time) is probably not good for your back.
When you need tea, you need tea.
The truest of all statements.
