Wired and tired.

Sleeping is hard. So is staying awake.

This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, isn’t it?

Feels like it, anyway.

It sucks. I look and feel as fed-up and dead as Vincent Schiavelli in Ghost, but my goddamn brain won’t shut off.

“Why are you hounding me like this? Leave me alone!”

My weary body is Oda Mae Brown just trying to get some shut-eye, but my smart-ass inner monologue is Sam Wheat keeping me up all night belting “I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am”. Except Sam was trying to accomplish something useful by that, while my brain is just being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole.

I don’t know why I’m all Ghost references today. I haven’t watched that movie in years. I’m sure my brain has its reasons, but it’s too busy repeatedly singing one of the songs I considered and then rejected for an upcoming musical theatre audition to take the time to clue me in on what any of those reasons might be. You’d think it could throw me a bone and repeat the song I actually chose to learn for the audition, but I guess that’s asking too much.

And I guess creativity is out of the question as well, so here I am spending another blog post bitching about insomnia instead of writing about anything remotely new or interesting.

Thanks for nothing, brain.

I wish Daylight Saving Time were a person so I could punch it in the face.

Well, maybe not an actual person. Real people faces are full of teeth and little bones and other things that go crunch and destroy your knuckles when you hit them.

Maybe my Daylight Saving Time punching bag could be the creepy Raggedy Ann doll a relative made me when I was a kid. Jesus, that thing was a nightmare. Just knowing it was in the same room with me made my skin crawl. I used to turn it to face the wall and bury it under all my other toys, but it didn’t matter. Nothing escaped those soulless black eyes.

Daylight Savedy Ann. Fuck yeah, I’d beat the living daylights out of her, easy.

Anyway, you might say I’m in a bit of a mood. I’m in a mood because I ended up coming to work several hours early because I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep because, after a glorious and unprecedented streak of actually being good at the whole sleeping-and-not-just-staring-at-the-ceiling-all-night thing, Daylight Saving Time had to come along and cock it all up like the infernal twatting cocktwat it is.

And okay yeah, maybe I’m not so much working as redditing, and it is nice to have the office to myself in the early hours before anyone else shows up, and the birds outside are warbling away sweetly to each other just like angelic little Disney caricatures of birds…

…but that still doesn’t make up for me being awake and dressed and sitting in a dusty office cubicle in my dusty office chair staring at a dusty ancient ugly hand-me-down computer monitor at an hour when I should be balled up unconscious under a down comforter in penguin pajamas with my feet crammed into blue fleecy socks with fluffy white sheep on them and not one solitary thought of the waking world to be found even remotely near to my head.

Part of me wants to believe I’m overreacting. It’s just one tiny little hour. It shouldn’t cause this much chaos. And yet – *gesticulates wildly at everything while scowling* – here we are.

Why? Why does that one miserable little hour have such an immense capacity to ruin everything?

And more importantly, is someone in the building making Cup Noodles or am I just hallucinating the smell due to sleep deprivation? I hope it’s the former, because I’m having enough of an existential crisis right now without phantom ramen coming into play.

Or maybe I have a brain tumor and DST is the least of my worries. Probably not, but it’s always good to keep your options open.

Fuck, I really want noodles now.

Goddamn phantom ramen.

Here comes the sun (doo doo doo doo).

For the first time in months, I’m inhaling a large mug of coffee at my desk instead of tea.

This is because I had the nerve to somehow get 4 1/2 hours of sleep last night instead of the usual 3, and if there’s one thing my body hates, it’s when I try and do something nice for it like give it an extra hour and a half to rest and recuperate. So of course now instead of feeling refreshed I’m actually more tired, because reasons, and coffee is the only thing keeping me from passing right out on my keyboard and getting an ‘i’ in my eye.

I’m also currently on the tail end of a nasty two week illness that I can only describe as some kind of unholy viral cold-flu-gastroenteritis ménage à trois, and the fear that any particularly forceful cough might cause me to accidentally shit myself is still very real and present.

Speaking of shit, Madam Rorschach is up to her old antics again (after a lengthy and much appreciated stretch of hibernation) and has resumed laying waste to the office restroom as though she’s in competition with the US election over who can make the world a less pleasant place to live in. Her timing is impeccable, since between the plague ménage and that old bitch Aunt Flo showing her ugly face in town this past week, this Nut has had ample need to visit the workplace commode and then some.

Finally, in the First World Problems category of suck, it appears that my favorite suede boots in the whole wide world have finally reached a state of shabbiness I can’t ignore – despite my best efforts at denial – and will have to be sent off to live on a farm. So today is their last hurrah; one final day of clackety-clacking around town with me before we part ways forever.

TL;DR: I’m beyond tired, multiple things are shitty, and my most beloved boots have one foot in the grave.

So naturally, I’m…elated?

It started Wednesday. I found myself grinning out of nowhere, for no other reason I can think of except that I was alive.

And even though Wednesdays are the day that the Boss Lady comes in to pick apart my weekly reports and throw all our company policies into a tumult in her efforts to make things more efficient around here, I still left the office wearing that same stupid grin, and it’s yet to waver for so much as a second.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I was this happy ‘just because’. It feels almost ridiculous, in the best possible way. All the little things I habitually take inventory of to remind myself that life is worth living have suddenly been amplified to Giant Heaps of Amazeballs level awesome, practically throwing themselves in my path to the extent that it’s only a matter of time before I convert to Orthodox Disney and just start spontaneously bursting out into song.

I don’t know how long this will last or what convinced the storm clouds in my brain to suddenly part and offer up this glittering ray of sunshine, but thank you. Thank you for the light.

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You are getting sleepy, very sleepy…PSYCH!

Something has kicked my insomnia into tryhard mode. I can’t pinpoint the exact culprit(s) for 100% certain, but if and when I do, they will die a slow and horrible death.

YES PLEASE DO FEAR THE REAPER

This Bud’s for you.

It’s 2 in the morning. I am sitting on a bench in the shadows of a dark street corner, staring up at the stars and feeling the wind.

It’s been a long day, but thanks to my life partner Insomnia, I’m still wide awake. So I came out here, to let the starlight and the rustling of leaves fill my eyes and ears. To smother my incessant mental background chatter with a blanket of organic calm.

Beats lying in bed staring at the ceiling.

Out of the darkness, a guy in his twenties stumbles up over the curb and makes for the bench opposite mine, shooting me a rueful grin. He’s holding two unopened cans of beer in one hand, which he uses to indicate the bench while forming a question with his eyebrows. I start to nod but end up shrugging awkwardly at the last second, exhibiting my usual tenuous grasp on normal human interaction, but it gets the point across. Beer Guy saunters the last few steps to the bench and flops down with a prolonged sigh.

Although I have said nothing, Beer Guy decides he owes me an explanation as he cracks the first can open. “Hope you don’t mind. Gotta finish these off before…” Except I will never know the reason for his compulsory beer consumption, because he simply trails off there, assuming I understand where he is going with the thought. I suppose this is flattering, as it indicates I’ve successfully passed as someone who knows how today’s after dark society works, but in reality I’m just left unfulfilled. Before what? Before you turn into a pumpkin at 3am? Before catching the bus? Before your 12 step program sponsor sees you? Before the impending zombie apocalypse? Don’t leave me hanging, man.

Beer Guy interrupts my Before what? musings by grunting something in my direction, and I look over to see him holding out an unopened Budweiser. “Want one?” he asks, as casually as if we were hanging out in someone’s living room watching football and not total strangers on a dark street corner. “No thanks,” I laugh, and realizing the absurdity of the question he chuckles sheepishly back and quickly looks away.

Just FYI.

I return to my stargazing, but it’s immediately apparent that Beer Guy does not do well with sitting in silence. He scuffs his shoes against the paving stones and restlessly taps the side of his beer can. He begins looking around absentmindedly, peering down the sidewalks as if wishing someone else would show up. I start to wonder if he sat here hoping I was the talkative type, up for a late night chat. If so, he has chosen poorly.

The frequency of his tapping increases. He graduates to drumming the fingers of his free hand on the bench. He leans forward slightly and rocks a bit on the edge of the wooden seat. And then– we have liftoff! In one swift motion he is on his feet and disappearing down the road, tucking the unopened Budweiser under his arm as he throws his head back and chugs the remaining contents of the other.

I’ll never know if he turned into that zombie pumpkin.

Midnight Muffin Madness

midnight
noun
1. The middle of the night; specifically: 12 o’clock at night. – Merriam-Webster¹
2. Can’t talk, eating. – The Nut

Why I sleep with otters.*

(*Because I don’t have enough weird fetishes represented in my search terms as it is.)

I fail at sleeping.

If there’s one thing I will forever be jealous of, it’s Nutty Hubby’s ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat. He can nod off in almost any environment, no matter how public, loud or uncomfortable, in five minutes or less.

For me, trying to sleep means it’s time for every little solitary minute detail of the world to come flooding into my head for thorough dissection and analysis; a maze of intrigue created by my brain, to be solved before I am allowed the sweet respite of slumber.

For Nutty Hubby, trying to sleep is…wait, trying? People have to try to sleep? No no no no no. Do or do not, there is no try! LOL BRB ZZZZZzzZZzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzzzzz…

If I didn’t love him so much, I’d hate him.