Sooooo....

It's 3:30 in the morning and I'm awake. I'm just so, so fortunate. Not only have I been blessed with the gift of misadventure, I am also a first class insomniac. Insomnia...It's what's for dinner. (And just in case you haven't realized it yet, I am not drunk. I know that I usually babble incoherently on this here blog, but this time it's REALLY not going to make any sense. But no worries, I just had a bit of an early breakfast, so I'm fortified and ready to go. It's amazing what a slice of F. Bakery pizza and a glass of Tropicana can do for your brain...not a gotdam thing.)

Another aside. I've got Black Snake Moan on in the background as I type this. What the fuck was I thinking? As soon as it opened with Justin Timberfake in the first scene doing sexy times with Wednesday Addams, I mean Christina Ricci, I should have dragged my ass to back to bed and put my pillow over my head. And don't let me get started on Sam L. Jackson, he's in this piece of shit movie too. Either that motherfucker really has an affinity for movies with the word snake in the title, or he really WILL star in any movie that comes his way. Mind you, I really like SLJ-what does the L. stand for? Lucky Strike? Lemonhead? Lucky Motherfucker? Lula Mae?

I once read an interview where SLJ said that he would pretty much take any job offered to him because he knows what it's like to be really poor and have to struggle to take care of your family. And I really can't knock the man's hustle. Many is the day that I've thought about giving up the teaching to work at Mickey D's. I KNOW that the money is better and boy I'd fill up on ALL of the free cheeseburgers, orange drink (not soda, orange DRINK), and hot fudge sundaes I could get my grubby little hands on. But they don't fire people from Mickey D's, do they? So I'd be fine stealing all of that shit. ( And yes, mofos...I am a teacher and a damn fine one too. More on that later.)


Anyhoo, back to the lack of sleep thing. I've really got this thing down to a science. Not everyone has the skills necessary to wake themselves up as many times as possible throughout the night. And I can will my mind to wake myself up without even knowing it. I don't even know what the fuck that last sentence is supposed to mean. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have lots of little tricks up my pajama sleeves for ensuring that I don't get a good night's sleep. Here are my favorites. Feel free to jot them down if any tickle your fancy.

1. Get yourself a good case of sleep apnea. Not only will you snore like a Mac Truck and wake up your neighbors, your body will struggle for oxygen causing it to wake you up 5 or 6 times an hour so you can roll over or slap yourself or do whatever it is you need to do to catch a nice deep breath. (Unfortunately I don't have one of those C-Pap machines, a doohickey that you strap to your face while you sleep. Supposedly what it does is pressurize your airway. But let me tell you how this machine really works. While wearing this "mask", it will make you look like Jason from them scary movies. Your baby daddy will innocently roll over in the middle of the night and BAM! He proceeds to bash you senseless in his sleep-induced haze because he thinks he's having a nightmare or he's using the "mask" as an excuse to beat your ass for eating ALL of the chunky monkey he bought a few hours earlier. Don't we all know that when you're knocked unconscious you really have no choice but to sleep? Am I wrong or am I right, Smokey? In the morning, you may be a little hazy from the lashing you took, but it won't be any worse than how you feel when you wake up after having popped a couple Tylenol pm before you go to bed.


2. Learn how to kick your legs properly. Kinda like how you used to do when you were learning how to swim using a kickboard when you were little. Of course, I'm sure that some of you didn't take swimming lessons. You just had no choice but to learn to swim when your father threw you into the ocean in an attempt to drown you. But you got him good, didn't you? You learned how to swim all on your Pat Malone. And your daddy got used to crying himself to sleep every night because he was a failure and couldn't succeed at ANYTHING! (Yes, I really can be an evil bitch. But I'm not really mean. I'm just tired. Very tired...says the psychopath to the police.)

Back to the kicking. Doctors like to call this kicking "Restless Leg Syndrome". What they should really call it is "The pharmaceutical companies are threatening to take away my new Jag if I don't help them to get rid of the excess inventory of this here monkey pox drug Syndrome". Anyhoo, when you've got this RLS, you just like to kick your pretty little legs ALL NIGHT LONG! Sometimes you connect with your spouse and you wake up chuckling to yourself as he/she/it moans in their sleep. (I am SO going to Hell.) But most of the time you just toss and turn and kick.

3. Forget about letting all of the stress and craziness of your day float away as you drift to sleep. Get up once an hour to think about the fact that you forgot to make that list of your favorite crayon colors like you said. Or get up to check that the navy tights you washed last night are drying so that you can rock them in the morning with your new chucks. OR better yet, get up at least once during the night to make sure that the cookies/macaroni and cheese/chocolate mousse/pork chop, etc. that you have in your fridge didn't try to run away when you put them to bed earlier. Take a bite out of their funky little ass to make sure that they know who's boss. And please make sure to let your food digest properly. After you finish gorging on the floor in the light of the fridge, sit on the couch and watch a little VH1 Soul. Old school jammy jam videos are well known for their amazing ability to leave you dazed, confused, and unable to sleep worth a damn.

4. I can't really remember any other tricks I have up my sleeve. Actually, there is one more. Make sure that your husband does not have a NORMAL alarm clock on his bedside table. Make sure he has the one from Oregon Scientific that flashes the time onto the ceiling in big bright red numbers that jolt you out of your sleep every time because you think he's pointing a laser shooting thingie on your head when he checks the time in the middle of the night. Try to get him to do it at least twice every night. Works like a charm!

You may now be asking yourself how I know that I have sleep apnea, RLS, a silly husband, etc. WELL, let me tell you. A few years ago, at a money grubbing neurologist's suggestion, I was subjected to one of the most truly awful experiences known to man...a SLEEP STUDY. (Well, maybe not the most truly awful, but pretty bad.) Basically you check into the hospital overnight and a bunch of off duty janitors monitor your sleeping habits. Before you get to "rest" for the night, they prep you for at least an hour (no joke) by connecting ALL KINDS of wires and shit from the top of your skull to the tip of your piggy toes. And I am NOT exaggerating when I say that there are so many wires connected to you (I'd say at least 50, if not more) that you cannot go to the bathroom without one of the janitors having to leave his mop and bucket in a friend's care so that he can come in to partially break the chains of your bondage. I'm assuming that they disconnect only those wires that may electrocute you if you pee on them by accident because you can't see the toilet for all of the radio shack shit tethered to you. The rest they probably can't be bothered to reattach again, so they leave them be. Like they really give two shits about accurate tests results.

After you're connected up to Big Brother, they leave you to "fall asleep just as you would at home." Yeah, I'm telling you that's what they told me. It wasn't all cheeseburgers and orange drink, but I guess I did sleep for some of the time. In the morning, my janitor buddy told me that I like to have these little gasping fits a few times an hour (mild sleep apnea). And he informed me that I really seem to enjoy kicking while I sleep too (something ridiculous like 60 something kicks in the 8-9 hours I was there). Nice, huh?

I make it sound like I don't get a lot of sleep. I actually do. I like sleep. It's my favorite pastime after eating and reading. But even if I've slept 12 hours the night before (meaning I was in my bed for 12 hours straight), I will still yawn all morning and be very tired all day. So I just don't get as much of that completely restorative, deep ass R.E.M. sleep that I need. But I'm making do. Plus, now that I have this here blog I KNOW that I will succeed in knocking myself out with all of this boring bullshit I type.

I actually yawned just then. I'm gonna lay down on my futon and watch the rest of the Sam Lula Mae Jackson movie. Maybe JT and SLJ will make sexy times before the movie's over.

Snoochie Boochies!
M.M. Misfit