Shh! I'm Trying To Sleep!

Do any of you meditate?  Do yoga?  I've tried several times, but I really suck at both.  I took a yoga class in college and I was so hung up about getting into ridiculous poses in a room full of people that I couldn't relax, so I dropped out.  I have tried to do it at home with a DVD many times, but I just don't stick with it.  Same with meditation.  I so often wish that I could be one of those people who is totally zen, calm and quiet minded, at peace with the world.  I'm not that person.  Instead, I feel like I live trapped inside some kind of mental tornado.  My mind is never ever still.  I can't shut it off.  I think more than I talk, and if you spend much time with me, you'll probably find it really hard to believe that it's even possible to think more than I talk.   Well, it is.  And the thoughts come at the most inopportune times, like when I'm supposed to be paying attention to something important, or like right now, when I'm supposed to be sleeping!!!

9 nights out of 10 go something like this: put the kids to bed, talk to Greg (or whatever) for about 30 minutes, then get my own butt into bed.  I'm rarely up past 930 or 10.  I lay down.  I think my prayers.  If I need a little help I count - not sheep though, just plain numbers.  My dilemma with sheep is a prime example of how my twisted mind works: I try to imagine sheep jumping over a fence.  I start with one.  Suddenly, two sheep jump the fence at once.  Then 3 at once, then before I know it the whole herd is cascading over the fence and it's impossible for me to count them individually.  It totally stresses me out, but I digress...

Tonight was the 10th night.  You know, the one that doesn't go as planned.  I'm exhausted, believe me.  I could use the sleep.  I also have a killer headache, which may or may not be helped by sleep.  The point is, I want to be sleeping right now, but my mind is running on overdrive.  What's so frustrating is that it's racing for no particular reason other than simply to race.  I laid down to go to sleep tonight and this is what happened:

Sam jumped onto the bed and carefully positioned himself half on my neck and half across my face, leaving just enough space for me to suck fresh air through one nostril from around his stomach fur.  I didn't make him move, because, as crazy as it is, I love that stupid cat, and I like having his soft, warm, rumbling body against me.  I thought my prayers and started to count, but somewhere before I reached 100, I stopped counting and started thinking.  Why the thoughts come is beyond me.  They appear out of the blue, usually in rapid succession.  Tonight, my first thought was about my cousins Tish and Ashley who lost their mother unexpectedly to a brain aneurysm the day after Thanksgiving, 21 years ago.  It was the most heart breaking funeral I have ever been to.  Ashley was only 5 or 6, and I can still hear her pitiful cries over Barbara's casket.  It is an image that will be forever emblazoned in my mind, and it brings me to tears every time I think of it.  So of course, I started crying while I was laying there, which doesn't do much to help sleep.  I shook the funeral thoughts from my mind, dried my face and tried again to fall into dreamland. (Actually, I have really messed up dreams to, but I'll save that for another day)

Second go:  I skip prayers, because already said them 15 minutes ago.  I start counting, but I don't think I even reached 10 before Greg must have had some kind of falling dream or dreamed something traumatic.  He jumped so high he threw the covers off of us.  He rolled over, apparently unaware of his actions.  I, however, was even more awake.  As I laid there, more and more thoughts just streamed through my brain.  Damn-it.  I made soup today and left it on the stove top to cool.  I forgot about it and it's still sitting there, 8 hours later.  Wasted soup, and it was really good too.  I was going to eat that for dinner tomorrow.  Now I'll have to think of something else to make.  Do I need to go to the grocery store tomorrow, or can it wait til Monday or Tuesday?  I need to get a planner for 2012 and a new memory card for my camera.  Maybe I'll go to Target tomorrow.  Tomorrow is my niece's 18th birthday party.  Scratch Target.  I don't need that stuff right this second anyway.  And I really should wait until payday, which is Friday.  Since my health insurance decided to change their chiropractic coverage, I was hit with a $350 bill - 10 visits went by before the chiropractic office found the error.  They were nice about it, and said that I could just pay for my current visits per Diem and pay off the balance after Christmas, but I can't do that.  Carrying balances keeps me awake at night. (Ha!)  I paid the damn bill, but now I'm really broke.  Yep, definitely wait until Friday to go to Target.  Speaking of the chiropractor, I am really upset about this whole insurance thing.  My head is killing me and so is my hip for that matter.   I don't have headaches all day every day, but it starts in the middle of the night and lasts to mid-morning most days.  I would be able to fix it with 5 or 6 visits to Dr. Luke, but at 35$ a pop, I can't afford that right now, so I have to wait...until January!  OMG.  The holidays are going to be hell if this gets worse.

Channel change, chiropractor thoughts are over.  Now I'm on to something new.  There's a dead deer hanging from my back porch.  My brother in law shot it this afternoon and gave it to us.  That's super nice of him, and I will eat it, but I'm not thrilled about it dangling from my deck.  I overheard Greg on the phone with his dad this evening.  He said, "Yeah, come down at 8.  I'm going to cut her legs off first and then you can do the rest of her at your convenience."  In context, those words are really gross.  Out of context, someone could be calling the police on us!  Ha!

I hope Andrew doesn't pee the bed tonight.  I let him have a large cup of milk before he went to sleep.  He rarely pees at night, but he apparently drank too much last night, because he peed the bed, right after I had washed all of his bedding, of course.  I don't want to wash it again tonight.  I also hope the cat doesn't puke in the laundry room again.  That was super gross to wake up to.

And on and on it goes...just random, pointless, mental chatter that I can't turn off.  Obviously, you see I got out of bed.  Maybe writing some of it down will erase it from my files long enough for me to catch some z's.  Probably not.  If it weren't already so late, I would consider taking something to help me sleep, but if I take something now, it'll be too hard to get up.  So I'm stuck awake, on the darn computer, wishing that I had the ability to quiet this endless stream of yakking long enough to fall asleep.  Maybe I'll go sit on the couch and chant "Om" for a little while.  I'll let you know how that goes.