Awake.

It is waaay to fucking early to be awake. I am taking this with a grain of salt, as in a couple of months I will most likely be kept awake by my daughter. So I am seeing this as training. I’ve been up since two a.m. and there are a variety of reasons for this.

Reason One: I think I didn’t do enough pacing yesterday;

Reason Two: I woke up at two in the morning because my Princess Frog was boxing my bladder and something else I have not yet identified and I never got back to sleep after having gotten up to pee and been harassed by the cat who was very happy to have someone to talk to that early in the day, and therefore attempting to trip me;

Reason Three:After I went back to bed, I started thinking and had to get up again because I was fully awake.

Thinking is bad when I wake up in the middle of the night, because it quickens my brain’s pace. It wakes it up. And the resulting neural activity is pretty much comparable to running in a really long corridor aggressively lit by hundreds of neon lights, flinging all the hundreds of doors open and asking “what are the answers to my questions” repeatedly in a loud voice.

What are my questions?
That’s an interesting question. Brace yourselves for an intrusion in my psyche. (Don’t be scared. It’s not like this all the time. It has not happened in a really long time, in fact.)

1. What is the catch with the perfect, newly rebuilt condo we just signed for?(Yyyesss!)

2. What will I be like as a mom? I hope I am patient. Will we be happy in general with the way we are bringing up our little one? What will she look like? Oh god – I hope she has her Daddy’s eyes. He swears it’s impossible for her to have blue eyes, because mine are brown. Ohhhh sweet - I get to cuddle her and love her and watch her grow up…oh wow. We made a person! We made a living being! How fucking awesome is that? We’re good people. We’ll do just fine. I’ll have to stop swearing. Fuck.

3. Where do I start when I get to work this morning? I’ve been away for three months. I’ve lost touch. How do I keep a good working relation with my coworkers and reintegrate the workplace without pushing my pregnancy on them? How do I keep calm when all I want to do is tell some of them to fuck off?

4. Why is my technique for breathing out my anxiousness and breathing in calm and serenity not working?

5. Oh – it’s because in my head, I’m singing ‘What I Am’ by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. Okay. That’s why.

6. Now I’ve switched to ‘Long December’ by the Counting Crows. Maybe if I replace the singer’s voice with a guitar gently strumming, I will actually lull myself to sleep. Huh. Sounds good – I wonder why they didn’t just do an instrumental version. Ah – radio play. Shit, can’t do it.

7. Breathe in calm. Breathe out tension. See the red ball rolling away from you. The red ball represents all the questions and thoughts in your head. Push the ball away. See it roll away until it is a pinprick in the distance. Sleep. … Why can I hear Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on the Bald Mountain now?

8. Fuck. Red is such an aggressive colour for a relaxation technique. Make the ball blue. Aaaahhhh….much better. Wait – it’s not rolling away!

9. I wonder if H is sleeping. Should I ask him? No. I'll wake him up if he's sleeping. What time is it?

10. What kind of drapes do we get for the new house? I need something sheer and something opaque over it. I am sick of this apartment with the plastic horizontal blinds in mismatched colours. I want a classic, sober look with flair. Beige? Tan? Hmm. Maybe moss green. Oooo, ooo! I know! Moss green with a soft pattern for the sheer drapes, and a nice raw-canvas beige for the opaque drapes over top. Yyyes. But for the bay window in the dining room…wood blinds with a sheer drape? Huh. We’ll need to take measurements. How soon can we do this? Wood blinds are expensive, I hear. I should check Home Depot online.

See? These are the times I think I am going crazy.

I don’t know how to stop it. If I did, I would not be typing this. It’s now five thirty. I got up at two thirty after twenty some minutes of fidgeting and sat on the sofa, reading. The cat was lying on top of the book. I moved the book. The cat was flailing its tail at me and purring very loudly. Like I said, he was so fucking pleased with the company in the middle of the night. So I pet the cat and whispered sweet cat things in his face. He loved it. So he sprawled himself smack dab in the middle of the pillow I use to prop up my book on my lap. I let him, as I was trying not to get pissed off. I figured, kill him with kindness. So I pet the living shit out of him and he stayed for ten minutes, then went away. ‘Victory’, I thought to myself. I was convinced reading for twenty minutes would do what it usually does before bed, i.e. put me to sleep. But I read until four. Then I thought maybe I could give sleep another chance and go to bed. Didn’t work out. Sigh.

I am going to get ready for work in an hour and a half. But it’s okay. I am not even mad. I am just a little worried, and I hope to get a better night’s sleep tomorrow.