Pajama time everyone….

I’m afraid I love my pajamas entirely too much. It’s dangerous and addictive this longing I have to come home and immediately put on my pajamas and curl up on the couch. It could be that the temperature has not gone above 10  all day, and that it has been this cold for about 5 days and will be for 5 days more, but now that I think about it, I was loving my summer pajamas too much as well.  I actually have a picture of myself on the back porch with my summer jammies and a corduroy shirt over them. There is something a bit odd about getting your jammies on and going out and sitting in the screened tent.  

I found the wonderful feeling of sleeping pants a couple of years ago when my friend Carol gave me a pair for Christmas. I was at the time stuck on  wearing oversized night shirts to bed, cotton preferably,which would unfortunately shrink to size of a postage stamp and I would have to wear a bathrobe because my hinny would be showing. When I got the sleep pants I remember thinking, I don’t wear pants to bed what the hell am I going to do with these?  That was until I wore them one cold night. I discovered that  they are heaven on earth. So that winter I bought a couple more pairs and just used short sleeve tops. I have heated mattress pad so I am very comfortable at night. I know you are supposed to sleep cold, but if I sleep cold, I don’t really sleep. I hate waking up cold.

The switch in the summer to matching PJs was after I was hospitalized in March and when I asked Mike to bring me some pajamas he brought me one of the undersized sleeping shirts. It was the hanging out at the hospital in front of the son of the patient in the next bed that did it for me forever with the night shirts. When I returned home, I threw them all out and bought about 6 pair of short and top set PJs for the summer.  I love my summer “jammies” as much as I love my winter ones but the winter PJs get more of a work out.

I have a tendency on the weekends to stay in my PJs and not get dressed on Saturday at all, unless I have to go somewhere.  It takes me a whole day to feel normal anyway. For example it snowed all day today and the wind was howling on the hill above me. I went out exactly twice, once to feed the birds and the second time to get the paper and mail. I actually put my clothes on over the pajamas because I was cold and too lazy to change and then change back again.

So why do I need the pajamas so badly? It’s a sense of comfort I think a letting loose so that I can be me and relax and don’t have to be professional on the edge of my seat leaning in, listening , listening, listening.  Although often Michael thinks I’m fair game because I’m sitting in the living room – listening. But I know what they are what they represent; they create a separation from that me -the social worker and the other me the tired me who just wants to read, eat and write a little. I need that separation without it I would lose my mind.

I have had off of on call for the last three weekends and they have been blissful. Reading, sleeping, writing, cooking – a little- doing very little of the have to do things, so little in fact I am a little behind in house cleaning. I did take the Christmas tree down but the box is still in the blue room waiting to go down stairs. I have done the dishes and laundry but that is really bare bones minimum. I have showered and of course changed my pajamas.

I really think that I may be thinking too much about my pajamas for now, but it is cold and snowy and really I can’t think of a reason to do anything else but stay in them. I wish they would have a pajama day at work, like they do in schools. How many times have my caregivers or patients said to me, “I’m sorry I’m not dressed”, to which I reply, “If I were home I would be in my pajamas”. This is the absolute truth.

Not much to talk about social work wise. Things at work have been absolutely ridiculous and therefore I have to process before I write.  I will probably write it out, that is how I process things usually and I will do that before I put it out there and maybe I will just not write about it specifically at all, but generalize the recent happenings.  I took a new hire nurse out on an orientation visit on Friday and I am still reeling from it and what happened during the visits. To say the least, it was eye opening. More on all this soon……

I’ve got my pajamas, now if I could only sleep more, but that’s another story.

Peace from the Wearyempath – stay warm – get your pajamas on!