Sleep, or the lack thereof

I've only had five hours sleep tonight.  And I guess that's all I'm going to get.

Partly it's because of the heat.  Although others will laugh, we are having a heat wave in Vancouver.  The authorities are putting out heat warnings.  The temperatures are lower than across Europe and a good deal of the US, but we aren't prepared for heat in Vancouver.  Air conditioning is not common in residences.  I'm dealing with it OK during the day (with multiple fans), but it's not very comfortable at night.  Not excessive, yet, but uncomfortable, and so, not conducive to sleep.

(Partly it's because, due to the heat, we've got to do more watering in the Deltassist garden.  And, at the same time, the cobbled together system of hoses and valves that we worked out to both water the garden *and* run the misting station is starting to break down as various pieces of it break. And, due to the heat, Deltassist is insisting that the misting station [which I've never seen anyone using] run during business hours, so we can't water the garden during business hours, so today's garden time is set for 6:30 AM.  So, even though I'm up way early, there's no point in trying to get any more sleep before I *do* have to get up.)

Partly it's because I'm getting older.  As you get older, any minor sleep disturbances become more significant.  It's harder to get regular sleep.

Partly it's because I've always had problems with sleep.  I could never sleep when out teaching, and away from Gloria.  Most times out teaching, I was running on two hours sleep a night.  There was more than once that I only got a couple of measurable hours of sleep in a week (although I did get into bed every night, and possibly dozed a bit).  About the only "tourist" type stuff I could do was walking around in the wee hours of the morning.  I can walk all over North head, in Sydney, in the dark, because that's how I explored it.  I caused a bit of a furor with the RCMP security detail one time at 4:30 AM by taking a flash picture of the frontage at 24 Sussex Drive (which is no longer identified as such, with the stone pillars  only fronted by a stone maple leaf).

It's not as bad as just after Gloria died.  Most of the time I can get enough sleep.  But it's annoying, all the same.