As I type this sentence it is 5:55 a.m. I’ve been awake for 55 minutes, out of bed for 25 of those. In an odd bit of coincidence or perhaps it was foreshadowing, Mr. Coffee was already starting his happy bubbling sounds when I stumbled down the stairs in the dark of this pre-dawn morning.

I thought I set Mr. Coffee to start at 6:30 a.m. last night before I turned in at an unusually early hour. This would give it and me a full fifteen-minutes of togetherness before The Tibbles’ 6:45 a.m. arrival.

It’s spring break now, I guess, so I’m on Tibble patrol for the next week.

Of course this is no excuse to be awake at 5 a.m. None at all, but here I am typing in the dark at 6 a.m. I’ve already had a donut and half a cup of coffee. Also, The Current is playing Billy Bragg’s “A New England,” which is in my Top 5 all-time favorite Billy Bragg songs. His voice does things to me in a manner that I cannot share on a family-values blog like I Will Dare.

Just kidding, his voice totally turns me on in ways I don’t wholly understand. I think it’s the accent plus the politics and the guitar. I get turned on by weird stuff.

I had to google what time the sun rose, because I don’t know these kinds of things. I got about an hour to daylight. 40 minutes until imminent Tibbling.

Yesterday I tried Taco Bell’s new Waffle Taco. It was a heaping helping of spongy, greasy grossness topped with bland sausage. The only thing worse than bland sausage is dirty-feet-tasting sausage that sometimes happens on frozen pizzas. Never get a plain sausage frozen pizza because they always taste like dirty feet. Always. I’m in my forties now. I know this stuff. Trust me.

The real story of this week was not the Waffle Taco, but the sheer amount of bullshit I have spewed in the name of The Current’s March Madness. For reasons I cannot explain I have decided to be ridiculously invested in this stupid (and stupidly fun) Rock & Roll Tournament. This means I have spent a majority of my week arguing about Rock & Roll on the Twitters. People, it has been the most fun I’ve had on the Internet in ages. I like to argue in general. I like to argue about Rock & Roll specifically.

My bracket is irretrievably busted because roughly half of The Current’s voters are deaf, no-taste morons. The Talking Heads over Elvis Costello? And, the biggest affront to the entirety of Rock & Roll: Queen over The Rolling Stones. QUEEN OVER THE STONES! If I weren’t an angry hermit I would get some matches and light shit on fire.

Of course, I have to save some of this outrage for laster this morning when my much-beloved Replacements go up against my most-hated U2. My friend Wolfdogg has already warned the Internet that if this vote doesn’t go my way I will burn some shit to the ground.

I am passionate if nothing else.

(also, my alarm clock just went off).

P.S. 24 reasons I would actually marry Prince Harry. I approve of all these.

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All I know is that I tossed and I turned and every time my brain woke up it started singing, “We are the Village Green Preservation Society. God save Donald Duck, vaudeville, and variety.” Just those two lines over and over and over again. I’d toss and turn and punch the pillow, all the while with the Donald Duck and vaudeville on repeat. Finally, I’d drift off to sleep only to dream about a sort of stop-motion kind of cartoon (think old school Rankin & Bass Christmas specials) called “Village Green Preservation Society” that was all about environmental conservation and not testing cosmetics on animals.

I couldn’t tell if the lyric was keeping me up or waking me up. It was a brutal night. Finally, around 7:30 I just gave up the futile attempt at sleeping and marched down stairs to the tune of the Village Green Preservation Society playing in my head. I poured some coffee and Cheerios and settled in for breakfast with Alex P. Keaton (usually I have breakfast with Dwayne Wayne and Whitley and the rest of the Hillman students but they’re getting to the lame ones where Jaleesa has married Colonel Taylor and I hate that they turn her into a simpering, weak wifeything).

AND GUESS WHAT? It was the episode where Mallory wants to run off and elope with Nick. Once they get to the Justice O’The Peace, Nick starts having second thoughts specifically because the Chapel of Quickie Marriages doesn’t have Lola by The Kinks.

Damn.

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Somewhere I dropped the habit. I think it stopped when I started living alone and didn’t have a noisy house full of sister or roommates to contend with.

A few weeks ago I had another bout of insomnia and decided to bring back this old habit to see if it would help. So far, it kind of has. My sleepytime playlist includes Ben Gibbard, Mike Doughty, and a bunch of other mellow love song type things.

Somehow, the songs have infected my dreams in a way that is hard to explain.

My favorite thus far is one where I was pregnant and decided to throw myself a baby shower. I had grand plans to serve 77 McDonald’s cheeseburgers to my guests. However, those plans were foiled when McDonald’s got all huffy with me trying to order 77 cheeseburgers at the drive-thru. It was at that point I told my mom and my sisters that I should probably make sure I was really pregnant before having the shower.

Yeah.

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One of the things not allowed is a TV. This isn’t a very difficult rule to follow because I’ve never had a TV in my room. Bedtime is reading time, and has been ever since I was a kid (when I first started suffering from insomnia). In fact, none of the Sister Club are bedroom TV watchers.

The other unallowable is a computer. This is a rule that only came into being after I spent most of the late 90s and early oughts chatting online instead of sleeping.

The third thing not to cross my boudoir’s threshold is an alarm clock. This was banned on the advice of my doctor who said watching the hours click by on the clock wasn’t going to help me sleep, and would only make me feel more frustrated and hopeless. She was right.

Banning the alarm clock was easy because I had a cell phone with an alarm. My poor eyesight plus a teeny, unlit cell phone display made for a wonderful pairing.

This was all well and good until Ziggy came into my life a few weeks ago. Now my cell phone is a computer.

Uh oh.

I wish I could say I’m not the kind of person who would sprawl out, belly-down on the bed and type away with two fingers like someone was egiving away a gold medal in naked late-night two-fingered typing. However, I am exacly that kind of person.

Though I am giving myself a little credit, because it’s taken me like three weeks to actually post from Ziggy while in bed and that’s the most self-restraint I’ve shown in years.

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I have written many letters to your slutty younger sister 6:30 a.m. about how much I detest her. I didn’t think it was possible, but I think I like you even less. For as long as I can remember (which is probably like three or four days) you have been messing with my internal clock telling it that 6 a.m. is a jim-dandy fine time to get up in the morning. And really, 6 a.m., I probably wouldn’t mind so much if my clock was all, “Hey 11 p.m., let’s you and I get some shut eye.”

But the clock is not a fan of 11 p.m. The clock is more a fan of 11:30ish, 12ish with a good chunk of time spent reading before the eyes droop closed.

So what the fuck 6 a.m.?

You know, there’s nothing that great about you. It’s early. The internet is boring. TV is awful ( I saw the “Saved By the Bell” today where Violet Biggerstaff was supposed to save the day and win the big glee club conference that would send the Bayside crew to Hawaii), and I’m not a morning reader. My brain doesn’t function enough at your ungodly hour in the morning to retain anything. So mostly I sit around in a half-brained fog waiting for the coffee to kick in.

You know what 6 a.m., even my favorite cooing neighbor’s-tree-dwelling mourning dove isn’t awake at that time.

So really, I beg of you, knock it off. I love 7:30 a.m. He’s the only time for me, a perfectly logical, reasonable, and wonderful time to get up and embrace the day.

I thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Sleepless in Shakopee

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