Sleep Deprived

I get insomnia once in a while, and it always varies between popping up once a month or so, or a few times a week. I'm on a few times a week kick right now - which is fun for my laundry and tv show catching up, but not so fun for the people who are trying to explain something to me at 3pm while I slowly let my eyes droop, just for a second, until I'm woken up a few minutes later with my head on a three ring binder and some paper clip imprints clearly formed on my forehead. Actually, that only happened once, after that I took my sleepy time in the bathroom, cause nothing says exhausted like taking a nap while sitting on a public toilet.

Anyway, last night was one of those nights, and once I realized I wasn't gonna fall back asleep by counting backwards from a hundred (Mom, that doesn't work - I think that was just your sneaky trick to make sure we could actually do something like count backwards) I got myself a big glass of warm milk (wine) and settled in with Anna Karenina (7 episodes of Modern Family). It usually takes a few hours but I know it's time for me to try and go back to sleep when I'm giggling so much at my laptop that I start to drool.

It may seem slow but I just got drooly-giggly again at work at around the 1:15 mark so it's totally worth watching the whole clip.


So, needless to say I was a little out of it this morning and decided I needed to stop and get coffee because I couldn't even get my brain functioning enough to want to remember where we keep the filters. But after I stopped and got my coffee I had that feeling - you know, that feeling you get when you're fairly certain they gave you decaf instead of regular and you now want to march back into the coffee shop and make that 16 year-old barista stare at the dark circles under your eyes until he starts to cry.

Plus what the heck is a 16 year old doing at work at 8am? Why isn't he at school trying to mack on Cindy in the back of the band room where they store the large instruments before first period?! I didn't march back in and make him stare, but I did ask why he wasn't in school (young man) while he was scraping the whip cream off my latte (because it's the new year so I can have a toffee nut latte, but I can't have the whip cream - ah, girl logic.)

"Mack on?"

"You kids don't say that anymore?"

"No. And we don't wear bell bottoms either."

"These are boot cut!"

I go in there a lot so it's ok that he talked to me as if I was an elder, I forgave him. And then he explained he was in fact 19, and gay - no Cindy, no high school band macking. It's probably for the better, I told him. Those band room romances only last so long, and then there's imminent heartbreak and pretty soon someone's emptying their spit valve into your Pepsi when you go to get some more powdered donuts at snack time.

"I wasn't in band," he said for the third time.

And I don't normally admit I made out with boys who said they wanted to 'warm up' for trumpet/sax/something-blowy practice with my mouth, but that's what two and a half hours of sleep will do to you. It makes you admit to virtual strangers how geeky you really are, and then later - not much later, like, thirty minutes later - makes you seriously consider the benefits of sleeping pills. If not for your health, at least to help keep your street cred in check.