jin fu virus

alvin and i joke that when someone has a case of insomnia, like yours truly right now, that he or she has a case of the jin fu virus. alvin's chinese name is huang jin fu, and he's becoming notorious for not being able to sleep at night. check him out: http://alvinwij.multiply.com/

once morning arrives, say anywhere from 5 to 8 AM, he seems to sleep fine, but it's those darker hours that he's awake and unable to settle. i understand that; it seems so much more desirable sometimes - and productive, for me - to be awake and writing at night. writing during the day makes you feel the heaviness of unemployment - something seems too quiet and wrong about it. you should be making lunch plans or be stressed out or something. typing busily on a computer or cradling your phone, or both simultaneously.

i have to be up in 5 hours to leave for class. this isn't funny. i downed a melatonin a good 30 minutes ago... i think that because i'm naturally inclined to stay up until around 4 AM, letting myself indulge this tendency for the past week has really messed my body clock up. i was in bed around midnight, wondering why i wasn't already asleep. i'm normally an immediate fall-asleeper, something that i think was annoying for past boyfriends but is damn skippy to me. in my thoughts, i covered subjects varying from thinking about what shoes i'll be bringing back from the states to whether i should go to yoga tomorrow to flashbacks of the weekend.
it doesn't help that i'm getting sick again (what they say about your first year in china seems to be proving true - you're sick a LOT) and for some reason it settled immediately in my chest, and seemingly, my lungs. not much in the way of congestion but lots of coughing and hacking. it makes for not so good sleep. i'm extra dependent on the inhaler these days.

i think a lot about going home and what it will be like. one thing is definitely going to be jarring - the lack of capital. i have a list as long as my arm for things i want/need to bring back; mostly grooming items like real Q-tips and my favorite shampoo and contact leans cleaner, but also need to bring back some serious warm clothes and some requests from the girls here. we as women are product-starved: cindy wants a stila lip gloss like mine, linda wants the c.o. bigelow lip stuff like mine, etc. etc. i also have a rather substantial kiehls order waiting for me to be brought back. how am i going to christmas shop with no money? and almost as importantly, no discount like i've had for the past 6 years? this'll be weird. running to banana and buying cashmere was always a last-minute, reliable gift cop-out, but that's not going to be an option now.

i also wonder if the homesickness is going to kick in once i land on my own turf. my sister and cousin have already planned a 'day of eating' starting the minute i arrive. we head to tartine to meet up with shawn, whom i haven't seen in over a year, and it goes from there. burritos in the mission or at los hermanos, oysters at the ferry building, i'd like to squeeze in an everything bagel egg mitt if i possibly can. is my odd emotional suspension going to end once all of my familiar things are around me? my cat, my family, the general civility of being home? i guess we'll just have to see. i have a feeling that my natural cheapness will kick in here - a survival instinct forcing me to process that everything i do at home costs about 5 times more than it does in china with the exception of starbucks (HOW do they do that? stupid brand marketing) and yoga classes.

on a girly note, i hope i'm not going to gain back any of the weight i've lost here - i'm just starting to figure out how my clothes fit (i.e. everything i brought to china is a little big). those damn joe's jeans i spent a fortune on are now kinda baggy. my body is beginning to look more like it used to... i'd like to keep it that way. i'm going to see how bikram compares at home... and maybe go running if my back holds up ok. i don't know if these measure will hold against the day of eating and likely several more of those.