Sleeping disorder

One of the things about my sleeping disorder that really makes me get on my own nerves is that if I wake up during the night, for any reason at all, I'm generally up for the duration. My mind starts whirling around, contemplating all the things I have to do in the coming day; calculating how overdue the library books are; hoping that I'll rememher to transfer those chicken breasts from the freezer to the refrigerator when I get downstairs later. It's so silly.

Right now, for instance, I am up. It isn't the middle of the night, but it's pretty darned close. It's 5:30 a.m. and I just happened to wake up ever so slightly about ten minutes ago. Even though I didn't go to bed last night until well after midnight. This irks me because now I'm going to be really, really tired this afternoon (and with me, "tired" is usually accompanied by her best friend, "mean") and I have a lot to do.

My husband always reasonably says, "Why don't you just stay in bed?" but then again, he's also the person who reasonably says, "Why do you have to spend money?" and he should know that there are some questions in life that just can't be answered, no matter how much you'd like to slap the person who asked them. The reason I don't stay in bed is because I've been doing this for so long and I know I won't go back to sleep, I just know it. And being trapped in bed, in the dark, with many thoughts racing around in my head, is just horrible.

I know I'm not the only person who does this. If all those commercials for sleep aids on television are any indication, there are a lot of people like me out there. That one guy who can't sleep because he has a lot of stress at work apparently travels extensively with a beaver, Abraham Lincoln and a deep-sea diver. I just have Meelyn, Aisling and the dogs with me, but they're definitely real and they get mad at me when I'm grouchy, unlike that imaginary Abraham Lincoln, who seems to have a very nurturing personality.

Another commercial depicts the people who have taunting bedside lamps that float around just out of reach. One lamp is named "can't get to sleep" and the other is called "can't stay asleep" and I wonder how those people in that commercial would feel if both of those lamps were pursuing them?

The reason why I snapped awake this morning is because I'm excited. I'm leaving tomorrow as soon as Lilly gets here to drive down to Carol's house in southern Indiana. Then we're all going to pile into Carol's super-hot new SUV and drive down to Susie's house in Kentucky to spend the weekend at our annual CousinFest. Susie lives in a big house with a pool next to a golf course and all three of her guest rooms have en suite bathrooms, so you can imagine how stoked Lilly, Carol and I are about that.

So even though I've made out packing lists that include such minutiae as "four cotton balls" and "brown strappy sandals with medium heel," I'm still quivering with the need to buy a travel-sized toothpaste and wondering if I should buy two small plastic bottles for decanting the shampoo and conditioner that's already in the shower, or whether I should just buy two new full-sized bottles, since the shampoo and conditioner we already have are more than halfway down.

It's fun to be up so early thinking about shampoo, just really spectacular. I keep telling myself that.