Recently — that is, in the past few weeks at least, but possibly since I've started taking my new anti-depressant medication — my sleep has changed significantly. Aside from issues of insomnia, I've been sleeping longer when I don't have to get up. That might just be run-off from the energy lost during the insomnia periods, but I don't know for sure.

In any case, I recently went home for the weekend after a week of struggling to sleep. I have unfortunately misplaced Lieutenant Cuddles, so this provided one significant difference for me to see how my sleep's changed: I have something to hold on to, that something being my most treasured stuffed animal, Baby.

Yeah, I know, it's stupid for a twenty-one-year-old to still have stuffed animals, blah de fucking blah. I don't care. I love soft things and cute things. Stuffed animals are soft and cute. A few have sentimental value. I actually happen to be fairly selective about mine, even; of all the stuffed animals that have gone through my parents' house, maybe five of them were important to me. Maybe ten were interesting enough to get named. Serena was important because she was big; Auntie Lope was the most interesting animal I'd ever seen in tiny stuffed cloth form; Buddy bore a resemblance to a dog I knew; and Baby was the best damned stuffed bear ever. See, Baby isn't a teddy bear. Baby's a polar bear, and shaped in a much less annoying, much more soft and cuddly way. Baby's also been mine since the day I was born (thus the rather simple name). Baby's stood up to a lot with me, which is why he still sleeps in my arms at home. In fact, the only reason I didn't bring him to college was because I was afraid I might misplace him. Yeah.

Anyway, enough crap about stuffed animals. The point is, I tucked Baby under my arm when I went to sleep, as I've often done. I was exhausted, as the week before had been a constant fight for sleep, and it happily didn't take me long to drift off.

When I was little, I was known for moving around a lot in my sleep. My blankets often got kicked to the floor, even in winter, resulting in my waking up cold. My pillows would end up on the floor even up until last year. A couple of times I even woke up with my feet by the head of my bed and my head at the end; it's kind of amazing I didn't fall out of bed in my sleep more often than I did. That first night back home, after a week of insomnia, I didn't budge. I woke up, and there Baby was, tucked under my arm in the exact same position. I hadn't even moved from the side I fell asleep on, but— Baby. Baby had never stayed in my arms through the night before. Most of the time he didn't even stay in the bed, winding up on the floor with the blankets and pillows.

I'm not exaggerating. It was out of place enough for it to be something I noticed immediately upon waking up, and it gave me more of a sense of displacement than waking up in a hotel or someone else's house. It was weird enough to mention to my mom, who just said it must have been because I was so exhausted.

Eh, I've been exhausted before. On top of that, it happened every night after that I was there, and I've noticed it now here at school, too — though I have less proof, having nothing to cling to at night.

And I've been sleeping on my left side too, which is strange. Not as strange, as I'm sure it's happened before, but when I got back from home it seemed like I couldn't fall asleep unless I slept on my left side. Usually it's been the right; of course, when I moved more in my sleep I'd wake up in any number of positions, but now that I'm still it's more obvious. It might just be something with my mattress pad, I guess, though, since I did sleep on my right side at home. The only correlation between sleeping on my right at home and my left here is that both ways put me facing the closer wall, but... eh. I don't know that that could really be significant.

The not-moving thing, though, that seems significant, somehow. It's a little bit worrying, actually.

Because I can't be the only loser out there who clings to balls of fluff still. TELL ME WHO YOUR STUFFED ANIMALS ARE.

Baby is, as you'll know if you've read my last post, the polar bear I've had since birth. Baby's been through a lot; one of his legs seems to not have any stuffing in it anymore, though it hasn't been torn or anything like that. He's been a very much not white shade of grey for as long as I can remember, and he has a chip in his eye that I don't remember him getting. I used to rub his plastic nose on my lips all the time, an indicator of future habits, to the point where it actually fell off. My mother stitched him a new nose with red thread, since red was my favorite color at the time and it went quite well with his grey-and-black color scheme. Baby got me extra credit in art class one year.

And this is a photo of Baby with a stupid title, stupidly placed on DeviantArt. Appropriately, in that picture he is on my pillow!

Lieutenant Cuddles was a dog I bought from Duane Reade, intending to give it as a Valentine's Day gift to my parents. Unfortunately for them, I fell madly in love with Lt. Cuddles's cuteness and squeezability, which was far superior to the squeezability of most stuffed animals. I took the heart from his mouth (it was hanging on by a thread anyway) and kept him for myself. Unfortunatley, he is currently missing in action. I do hope I find him before the year's out, but a part of me worries he's gone forever.

Buddy was bought from a craft fair I went to with part of my mother's family. I don't remember much else about the fair, except that it was in a hockey arena and my cousin Justin got a little gecko he named Dexter. I wasn't interested in anything until, on the way out, I spotted a vender with stuffed dogs. As I've always loved dogs, I took a slightly closer look. Each dog had a scarf proclaiming its name around its neck.

If I were there today, I'd obvious have customized one to have my own dog's name, but I quickly saw a Dalmation named Buddy, which happened to be the name of Justin's Dalmation! I had to have it. Kevin then got a Dalmation with a customized scarf that read Riley, since that was the name of Justin's sister's Dalmation. Even though I never really spent very much time with Buddy and Riley, I liked them, but Buddy the stuffed animal has wormed his way into my heart beyond that. Besides, if I don't have Lt. Cuddles, I need some kind of dog in stuffed animal form. Buddy's place is just opposite Baby on my bed (on the other side of my decorative pillow, that is).

Chippy is a chipmunk. That's pretty much his appeal. I like Chippy, but there's just not much to say about him; his size, which is small, does not lend itself to squishability. He sits in front of the pillow.

Serena used to have a much longer name, but I've forgotten it. Unsurprisingly, I got Serena in my Sailor Moon days. Serena is a white horse with a halter, and is the largest stuffed animal I have. She doesn't stay on my bed, and though she's soft she rarely gets squeezed, but I do love her. I actually only originally got her because Jessi had two similar stuffed horses, though hers weren't white.

Auntie Lope was my oh-so-gosh-darn-clever name for... a stuffed antelope. I came across it when my brother and I ransacked a stuffed animal stash from the basement. I actually don't know where she is now; I presume she's still somewhere in the house, but she might've been donated to Goodwill or something a while back without my knowing. In any case, I mostly liked her because she was the most interesting stuffed animal ever seen. She had neat legs that didn't flop around but weren't stiff or uncuddly, though they did make hugs a little ungainly.

I've also still got my fairly massive (fairly because, hell, I know that an assload of other collectors had a fuckton more than I did) collection of Beanie Babies. There's a dog with two puppies reclining on a pillow in the corner of my room at home as well, and a white teddy bear my mother got from our neighbor Georgia before she died on my bed, but that one's never felt like mine (and is also a teddy bear, which I rarely find very appealing... and it's not very huggable). I've probably had others in the past, too, but I don't remember them anymore. I know there were Care Bears in the house at some point, and yeah, those probably were mine, but they never stayed in my room that I could remember. Oh! And I had a pink stuffed rabbit that probably had a name at some point, but which I don't remember anymore. It was the first thing I ever won in a crane game, and also won completely by accident! I don't know what's happened to that rabbit.