Coon Run Paradigm

During the previous four months, I have not slept well. When I do get to sleep, I simply wake up early. I can think of no logical reason for this, even though I have been prescribed some powerful sleep medication, all that does is make me sleepy the entire next day. Therefore; I have been avoiding these medications and take my chance and maybe get a good night sleep. Even my Sleep On ring continues to give me extremely low scores, like in the 30s. I used to freak out with a 95. I just cannot figure out why I cannot sleep. I know there’s something wrong; nevertheless, I cannot figure it out. The last thing I can do is to worry about it. I do not have anything to worry about; our finances are solid, and I have everything I would ever need for the rest in my life, and then even many boxes extra. So much so, I went on a campaign this last summer to start throwing things away. The worst thing, or among the worst things, I think is to have something and not be able to find it. That is one thing that drives me up to the wall, although I’m sure there are a lot worse things that we must face in their life. Overall, the last almost 15 years that I have lived in Washington were great. I like the mild winters, as compared to those miserable ones in Ohio, plus the summers aren’t that bad, with only a few weeks getting hot enough to turn on our central air. That was one fear that I had. I faced my fear and decided to test it out, because it sounded too good to be true. In Ohio, our smaller house had nine air-conditioners spaced evenly throughout our rooms. Because of the excessive electric bills in Ohio, we would only have the ACs on in the rooms that we were in. Therefore, if I went to the vacant room, I had to turn on another AC to cool it down, and let me tell you the summers in our part of Ohio could be miserably hot. However, now with my central air, and thermostat that works with Alexa, one simple command from anywhere in the house turns on our central air; which, immediately cools down the entire house. What is great that once the hot air is cooled down, I can turn off the AC. In addition; it has had no impact on our electric bill. It almost makes me wish that the sleeping problem was because of the heat, which unfortunately it is not. Moreover; I then must ask myself, why can I not sleep well? I have a feeling that something is missing in me, but cannot think what it is. All my kids are grown up now and actually have very well-paying jobs and secure futures if such a future is available to anyone. I’m often thankful that I am not starting off in today’s world, even though everything is going well, to my thinking is like a domino set, waiting for one domino fall, they all come tumbling down. I’ve always been a history fanatic and yet I really could not find any time in history that things were going on this good for so long. Even our preceding century endured two horrifying world wars, some atrocious pandemics, and hundreds of other wars that reshaped just about every continent on the Earth. Notwithstanding, we are already almost ¼ of the way through this century, and even though the world is plagued with wars, that have not reached the degree of misery caused by her previous world wars. In fact, at this time in our previous century, WW1, and Spanish Flue struck devastation on humanity. The one pandemic that we faced we were able to, so far, been able to contain it, with its major victim, the one who saved countless millions of lives, being punished for it. Let’s just say that let him was without sin be crucified. No matter how much good someone does there will always be those who say that it is bad. Nevertheless; that has nothing to do with me not being able to sleep. One comfort that I have experienced is that during the sleepless nights, at least some good memories of my childhood surface. Rather oddly; these memories seem to focus on the time I spent with my grandpa Hendershot and on his farm. Always attribute this, to all those animals and wide-open hills to climb and the play endless hours as compared to going home and sitting in a school classroom throughout the day. How could they even compete? Even though we had a 19-inch black-and-white TV with an antenna that we could adjust from the front of the TV compared to grandma who had a 12-inch TV with an antenna that took two people to adjust, one by the TV, and one up on the hill to manually adjusted it. At home, we lived on our TV as those were the days of only NBC, ABC, and CBS. They all three have such wonderful shows many of which are still shown as reruns to this day. We never watched TV that much of grandma’s house because there was so much else to do. The last thing I wanted to do was be glued to TV whatever so many hills to climb and animals to chase we were playing with. I remember one time while watching TV with grandma, grandpa who slept in the next room was snoring so loud we can I hear the TV. Subsequently; I complain to grandma about grandpa snoring, which he replied that he was not snoring. Grandma and I just looked at each other and laughed. Needless to say, we found something else to do during the remainder of that evening. I would often visit grandma and grandpa during my Air Force leaves, and of course visit Uncle John, who lived just up to the road a few hundred feet. One evening I saw a box of photographs that I had never seen before. Being curious I brought the box to me and started looking at the pictures.