last night I wanted to punch sleep in the face

I’m not normally a violent person, but sometimes, I want to punch things and people.

I never do, though. Goes back to being “not violent”. I mean, if I had to, like, fight for my life, I could punch things or people. Or if my kids or dog were being threatened, I could see myself taking a swing or three. I’m not really a real life badass, but in my head…? I so totally AM.

That being said, last night, as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, I wanted to punch things. The longer I lay there awake, the angrier I got. Sleep, that elusive bastard, was nowhere in sight.

I did all the usual tricks that normally take me away to the Land of Nod, but all that happened was… me not sleeping. I tried doing the most boring and lame thing ever, my no-fail thing, counting backwards from 100. I’ve never made it to zero. Last night I did. Twice.

I gave up at one point and wandered down to the living room where I was going to read The Strain (I’m close to the end) and then I remembered that it was the middle of the night, everyone was asleep, and this book scares me in broad daylight so maybe I SHOULDN’T read it. I decided to watch TV instead. Oh, good! I have some episodes of Dexter to catch up on… erm. Hmmm.  Maybe not…? Dexter doesn’t scare me, per se, but the premise of the show is suitably creepy, and that might work against the whole sleeping thing. Skip that. So I channel surf, and find a show on ID, only maybe I shouldn’t watch that either because it’s all true crime stuff, and it’s in the middle of the night… and I’m alone out here… and… and… what was that noise?

See, no one was winning. Not even Charlie Sheen was winning. It was an epic no-win kinda night.

I decided that I was definitely tired enough to go to bed and fall asleep. I told myself that it was late, I should be asleep, and I was ready for it. Part of me was rolling my eyes at myself and saying in my head that it wasn’t so because I knew I was lying. I told myself to shut my whore mouth, to leave me alone and stop being so negative.

Shut it. It made total sense last night.

So I headed back to my large, comfy bed where my man was sleeping all unawares that I had even left. I crawled in next to him, slid my sleep mask over my eyes, snuggled into my fluffy pillow and my blankets, got in the perfect sleep position, settled in and…

didn’t. fall. asleep.

Didn’t even DOZE. OFF.

What the fluffer, nutter?

Instead I lay there, totally comfortable and totally willing myself to sleep while my brain was laughing at me and doing cartwheels and going “neener neener neener”, and every time I tried to stop thinking, it would just take off in a new direction. It was a veritable whirlwind of activity. Where was sleep to put a curtail on this maniac?

And then, do you know what happened? I had to move. A perfectly perfect sleep position RUINED because my arm fell asleep before I did and I HAD TO MOVE. That just sucks, man. That just totally sucks.

I tossed and turned, unable to find another perfect position because, you know, that’s how it goes. And meanwhile my brain, having run out of meaningful matter to think about, starts in on the most inane and random things EVER. Things that I don’t even care about! Things I don’t even know why I know them!

I thought about getting up again and maybe reading something else or maybe finding a night-time appropriate show but by this time I was determined to GO TO SLEEP. I was going to lay there ALL NIGHT IF I HAD TO, but I was going to get some bloody sleep if. it. was. the. last. thing. I. did.

Screwing my eyes shut, curled in a tight ball, grimly determined to grab sleep and throttle the ever loving hell out of it when I finally caught it, convinced that I was going to see the light of day behind my closed lids before I saw true slumber, mad as hell…

I woke up five hours later, convinced that I was awake all night although I couldn’t quite explain how five hours had gone by with me all unawares…

It seems that sleep, that conniving ass, snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking and did it’s job anyway.

Next time, sleep. Next time you won’t be so lucky.

 

it’s not that i don’t want to…

I just don’t. I keep thinking I should get on here and write something, anything… and then I let myself get distracted. I started working on a blog a few days ago but it turned out to be way longer than I thought it was going to be, so I saved it to drafts, meant to get back to it, and still haven’t.

On the plus side, I’ve been reading a lot. I finished three books this past week, and that’s never a bad thing. And the house…? isn’t even trashed because I have KIDS who CLEAN!

So today is Thanksgiving. I feel like this is, like Valentine’s Day, a fake holiday. One that, if you think about it, shouldn’t exist. But it does, and it has for a long time, and me boycotting it isn’t going to change it. Instead, I changed the reasons we celebrate it. It’s really all about the food and having A LOT of it today. Don’t get me wrong; there have been other Tdays where we had turkey sandwiches, and even turkey TV dinners, because we couldn’t do the whole turkey dinner feast. Kinda sucked. But it was what it was, and I don’t think that anyone has ever died because they had to eat TV dinners instead of the real deal on Tday.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. Food. Lots of it. That, my friends, we had indeed. A huge bird that That Guy I Married got in the oven early this morning. We had pies and potatoes and gravy and corn and biscuits and stuffing and cranberry sauce and I think that’s it. We eat early and then just pick at it for the rest of the day and again for dinner. And then put it all away, and tomorrow, we’ll have leftovers!

Yay! for leftovers.

They call tomorrow Black Friday, and if I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t be venturing forth in it. But, I have to. I have to get some lady products of the feminine hygiene sort because I suck at planning ahead. If that was too TMI for you, well, then forget you just read that last paragraph.

Anyway, while I’m venturing forth, I hope I don’t die. I don’t plan on going anywhere NEAR the toy section or the electronic section or even the clothes section; I seriously doubt (hope) that there is going to be a run on the lady products. I checked the ads, and it looks like that aisle, at least, is clear of deals and steals. So I might make it out in one piece. If not… well. It was nice knowing you.

And yeah. It’s later than I thought it was. I took a nap today, and it’s kinda messed up my whole inner clock.

Catch ya later…

tonight i am a badass because i made dinner

Now, before you get all “psssh, I do that all the time”, let me explain.

See, I’m a mom and a wife and the owner of a pretty cute dog. My kids are homeschooled, and I’m of the stay-at-home-variety. My kids aren’t little anymore (almost 15 down to 10), so they don’t need that same intensity of constant monitoring that they did when they were younger. Still, my attention is rarely on just ME, if you get what I mean. I’ve got a lot going on all the time. It’s the life I signed up for, and I like it.

That being what it is, some nights I just don’t FEEL like making dinner. I’m, like, “dinner, make yourself!”. It has yet to actually happen. And since I don’t have a personal chef, I have to make it myself. My kids are JUST getting to that age where they can (and do) help, but they have yet to do it solo. I don’t think they’re ready; I’M not ready, either.

So anyway, some nights I just really don’t want to. And if we can swing it, those nights we get pizza or maybe Chinese. Tonight was one of those nights. I just really didn’t want to. And there weren’t enough leftovers to feed all six of us, either. However, neither was I feeling like takeout. So it was, like, a stand-off. Between myself and… well, myself.

So what was I to do?

Yeah, I got in there and I made the freaking dinner. It was easy, homemade chicken nuggets and French fries, but I still had to do it. And after it was done and baked and served, and as I sat there eating, I felt like SUCH a badass. Like, yeah, dinner… you don’t want to make yourself? I’LL SHOW YOU!

The kids were happy, that guy I married was happy, I was happy (because thinking of myself as a badass always makes me happy)… the only one who WASN’T happy was the dog. She didn’t get any of our food, and she pouted and stared at me mournfully the entire time I was eating. Sucks to be her, cause it was good!