Pesky Late Night Thoughts

Like those annoying “we interrupt this program” pre-emptive news flashes, there are nights that sleep is sidelined by bizarre thoughts. We’ll save the whole ‘the world is doomed, my life is a mess and falling apart” thoughts for a deeper day when I’m up to facing them. Tonight’s kaleidoscope of troubling thoughts borders on the side of absurd.

Crazy thoughts, like the hardest things to say (You’re right, I’m sorry, and we’re out of chocolate – oh, and crayon, which I didn’t realize was hard to say at all until my kids informed me that I actually say ‘crown’, not crayon). Then there’s the whole water isn’t wet thing – how can it make things wet, but not be wet? This is usually when the first trip to the bathroom occurs.

I often use the whole ‘can’t hear me shouting from the same room, but I swear, they can hear a flea fart three doors down’ complaint about hubby, or the kids, but at night, that leads to a whole ‘do fleas fart?’ debate. With myself, of course, because everyone else is sleeping. This can morph into ‘do bugs pee?’ (which often leads to the second bathroom visit).If the bugs continue to plague my thoughts, I inevitably get itchy. Which eventually rolls around to – you guessed it – do bugs get itchy? Is that why flies always look like they’re rubbing their hands greedily? Are they really just scratching their little fly appendages? They might want to buy lottery tickets.

Why does my dog sniff his butt after he farts? Is he thinking ‘dang, I smell goooood’? Or is he thinking ‘hey, I don’t remember eating a dead, rotting cow carcass’? Then he’ll wake up, scratch himself, and we’re back on the whole flea thing again.

It blows my mind that my husband can sleep while my thoughts are so troubled. I’ll listen to the sound of his deep breathing, and wonder if I can accidentally on purpose drop a piano in the room or something, just so he wakes up and stops taunting me with his peaceful sleep sounds. If I pushed him out of bed, could I fake the whole ‘wwwhhatt wuz that?’ fake wake up thing? Then he can tell me if fleas fart. Or why we don’t have chocolate.

The cat will start his whole ‘song of my people’ routine, which leads me to think I might not feed him anymore when his bowl is still full. Like seriously, does he sit there and count the kitty bits in his full bowl and say, ‘you know what, there should be 783 kibbles here, but I’m only counting 782…Mmmmmmooooommmm!!! I’m gonna starve!’ No wonder he never wants to go outside (not that he’d be allowed) – there’s no food dish out there.

Speaking of running out of things – I do not understand people who run out of toilet paper. How can they not get all worried, need therapy, when they’re down to their last few rolls? We came close during the whole hording Covid thing, and I’m still haunted by it. Seriously. We were down to our last package. We considered a home equity loan to buy a jumbo package on the black market. Fortunately, Costco brought out a skid as we were walking away, dejected at first, then elated when we saw the security team guarding the rolls. We raced to the checkout and drove the 45 kilometres home to stash them in our safe before driving back to finish our shopping.

Bathroom trip number 3…all good on the TP front here. Toss, flip the pillow, turn. Why is qumquat such a weird word? Why does awkward look so…awkward? Why do some people cringe when you say ‘moist’? Squeegee. I love that word. Some people play air guitar, I play air spelling, complete with rubbing my hand to erase mistakes.

Awww, I just heard an ice cube being born in my fridge. Man, I’m thirsty. Better not drink anything though, don’t want to have to pee again. I don’t get horsepower. Have you seen those Clydesdales? Five of them can pull down a barn. One horse can run faster than most cars, I don’t get how cars need 450 horsepower to do anything. A barn surely weighs more than a car. Or does it? How much do barns weigh?

Shoot, I forgot to plug in my phone. Can’t use the charger that came with it, because I don’t have one of those stupid USB-C blocks. Why did my phone come with a useless cable and no block? And why do I have to buy an adapter to use wired headphones? How much more difficult does Apple have to make my life before I switch to android? How much money does Apple make? Do they do this stuff just to see how far they can push us?

What time is it? I can’t tell if my eyes are open or closed, so that’s a good sign. Open, closed, open – ha, tricked me, one eye was open, the other was closed.

Hey, I remember in English class, my teacher said that every five characters was a word. For the rest of my school career, I wrote everything using the longest words possible (why use dull, which isn’t even a full word when I could use unsharpened, which was more than two words?) Now I’m paranoid that my drabbles (stories with exactly 100 words) are lies. Was the five characters really a thing, or was he just giving me a rule of thumb? What does rule of thumb mean, anyhow? Oh, man, this could get ugly. Mental note, check Google tomorrow, see if drabbles are literal words, so things like I and a, count as one word versus the five character thing. Darn you, Mr…what was his name again?

Shoot, I have to pee. I should’ve drank some water. But I’m comfy. But if you don’t get up and go, you’ll fall asleep only to wake up to go. Then what if you can’t fall back asleep? But what if I can’t get comfy when I get back? Are you comfy now? Exactly.

We need milk, bread, paper towels, and maybe pick up some more toilet paper. What else? Not eggs, not butter. There’s something, what was it? No, we don’t need napkins. Toothpaste?

I wonder if I won anything on the lottery tonight. Wouldn’t that be nice? I could be lying here, sleepless, and rich. Or at least won a free ticket.

It’s getting lighter out. I haven’t slept yet. I’ve been to the bathroom how many times? Five? Six? Seventy? Oh, wait, my eyes must be open if I can see it’s getting light out. Close them! Close them right now! I can’t. They won’t stay closed. Why? So not fair.

Hubby’s got to get up in a couple of hours. Finally, I’m getting sleepy. Thanks for taking this wild journey with me, listening to my crazy thoughts. If you can answer any one of the million questions, leave a comment. Now I’m drifting off…

Chocolate! That’s what it was! Now what were the other things we needed?