DEATH RAIN OF PHOTONS

[annathepiper]

So as I've been whining about in posts earlier this week, for the last few mornings in a row my beloved solarbird and I have been awakened earlier than we should be by a DEATH RAIN OF PHOTONS pouring down through the top of our bedroom window. This has been waking me up an hour if not longer before my alarm is actually supposed to go off.

And this morning I woke up well before five--because we'd left the bedroom windows open in an effort to allow breezes to circulate through the room and keep things relatively cool. That was fine, except for the part where as soon as the sun came up, EVERY BIRD IN KENMORE had to chirp about it. So I got jarred awake by a non-stop barrage of CHIRP CHIRP CHIRPITY CHIRPY CHIRP CHIRPITY CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP.

Our problem is that we have this semi-circle piece of window, at the very top, that has no shade. And it is positioned in such a way so as to focus early morning sunlight right down onto the bed, not entirely unlike sunlight through a magnifying glass frying insects. We don't have the extra bucks to get a shade up there, and even if we did, I'm not sure what we could find that would a) fit and b) look good.

As we are heading into the warm and sunny season of Seattle, our cloudy days are going to get fewer and farther between--so this hammer of light is going to continue to be a problem. We will very possibly have to resort to sleeping in our nice dark guest bedroom on the other side of the house, which does NOT get the death rain of photons in the morning. I hope I'll be able to sleep on the air mattresses in there all right, because I can't continue to be this groggy at work. >_< It's interfering with my writing, too, which is even more annoying to me.

Come to think of it, this may well have contributed to my insomnia problems earlier this year, since we've had an unusually bright and sunny winter and spring, too.

I suppose all this would be fabulous if I were in fact a morning person. But I'm not. I like to stay up in the dark hours, because it's quiet and cool and peaceful, and I am firmly of the belief that civilized persons should not have to rouse themselves before ten or even eleven. Alternately, I could put up with it if I knew I would have the opportunity to nap during the afternoon, but that's not exactly an option in a crowded computer lab.

Clearly, I either need to get a job with my own office, where nobody's going to care if I take a 40-minute nap, or else I need to damn well sell a few novels and start being able to write and work from home.

Comments

[firni.livejournal.com]

LOL!

I like how the birds start their symphony BEFORE dawn around here.

[annathepiper]

It was actually quite pleasant to listen to, or at least it might have been if I hadn't gotten to bed around midnight and therefore had only about four and a half hours of sleep.

"Go to bed earlier" might be an option here, except that to get in eight hours when the Death Rain of Photons descends, I'd have to be in bed by 9:30 or 10, which would leave me about an hour free time at home every evening, which would suck.

[firni.livejournal.com]

They generally don't wake me up. Probably because I use a birdsong CD to put me TO sleep each night.

[spunbutterfly.livejournal.com]

Maybe they are just -way- too close to your windows. The birds like to group together on my little guard railing and so someone advised me on setting up a few mirrors so the light will reflect and they will not want to come over and chirp so loudly in my ea.. in my window.

[annathepiper]

If we have to open the windows again for breezes tonight, I'll have to remember to leave the air filter running, which is what I usually do for white noise to lull me to sleep. I didn't do it last night just because I wanted to see if I could get by without it. Apparently the answer is no.

[annathepiper]

Well, it certainly sounded like there was a bird convention right outside our window, but there isn't much room for too many birds to flock right there. And we also have a zillion trees around our house.

But one of our neighbors had to hang spare CD-ROMs off of their roof so as to frighten away the woodpeckers, which are ALSO prone to wake us up at ungodly early hours of the morning--by hammering away on our metal chimney! Sounds like a jackhammer going off on our front porch. >_

[solarbird]

There's lots of room for birds right out there. The window has a large Juliet balcony running the entire width, that's deep enough for planter boxes. (And presumably that's what it's for...) Also, I do know that at least some birds were actually on it this morning, from one of the times I woke up.

[poetry-lady.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could get a nice paper fan from Uwajimaya to cover the window? That'd be relatively cheap. You could use a staple gun to attach it, maybe, or pins or something.

Of course, I do have to point out to you folks who got all gooshy over the snow, WISHING for snow, that I am having my revenge, as I dearly WISH for 90 degree days...I like sun and heat. :)

[annathepiper]

*snort* We'll have no shortage of nice sunny days. :) Snowy days, on the other hand, are an extreme rarity around here.

Don't get me wrong. I like sunshine just fine--but not when it interferes with my ability to sleep.

I don't know if Dara will want a solution that involves any damage to the wall; we'll come up with something, though. Thanks for the tip!

[kieri.livejournal.com]

I'll second the decorative paper suggestion. Any good art supply store should have a really nice selection of gorgeous papers, with texture and color and all sorts of goodies. You can cut it to the shape you need and put it up with something like poster putty that won't damage the wall. It'll keep the worst of the light out (and diffuse it, which helps even more) and you can take it down easily if you get around to a more permanent window treatment.

-- and yeah, UBS has a ton of great art paper that'd do the trick. You could get a sheet big enough for most window arches for between $1 and $5 bucks. :) Enjoy.

[annathepiper]

Hrmm. HrMRmMm. We'll have to see what happens. Right now money is tight enough for Dara and me that we're not spending ANY extra money AT ALL. :/ If we get the main space at MurkSouth rented out soon--Dara's been having a whole slew of showings over the last couple of days--this problem should alleviate itself. In the meantime, we can go sleep in the guest room if we have to.

Thanks for the tip about the poster putty, though! I hadn't thought of that.

The one other problem might be that this part of the window is rather up high; I'll have to see if we can reach it just by putting a chair or a stool there.

Antiphoton device..

[(Anonymous)]

I lived in a duplex with a similar window,that got the morning sun..fine on workdays, but not so on my days off. I used poster putty and thin cardboard(some manila file separators being thrown away at work). The birds never really bothered me much-I kind of liked them-it was the bugs that got in if I left the window open..I used a box fan in the window(bungeed in),facing outward on low speed for that problem.
My current neighbor..one of them, is "self-unemployed",and tends to work on cars and small engines-at two or three A.M.-five feet from my window-..they don't scream of fight or anything,just tools rattling and engines starting(and exhaust from oil-burning engines) at way too early in the A.M.....Scott

Re: Antiphoton device..

[annathepiper]

Bugs getting in wouldn't be a problem; we have screens on the windows. And as Dara advised me, if we have the air filter running in the room, that drowns out any external noise.

Which leaves the sunlight problem. I don't know what we'll do yet; the weather's turned cloudy again so it hasn't been a problem for the last couple of days. Whatever solution we wind up using for the shading of the window will take some effort, though; it's a very wide half-circle segment and it's also very high up on the wall. We wouldn't be able to reach it without a chair or a stool and maybe not even then. We'll have to try it and see.

If we went the route of poster putty + something, it'd probably be one of the screens kieri mentioned as being sold at Uwajimaya, the local Asian grocery chain. It would be an appropriate aesthetic for our bedroom. :)

Thanks for your tips!