I'm not asleep, are you?

Have you ever noticed it's when you need the most sleep that you can't?  Usually, in the week(s) before school starts in the fall, when my mind needs to be fresh and my body rested and ready for the new year, sleep eludes me completely.  My brain won't stop going over my endless to-do list.  Maybe if I wrote it all down, rather than keep a running tab on my head's laptop with a turbo-powered battery, I'd be able to power down at night. I'll keep that in mind for this upcoming August.

Tomorrow, I'll be at the hospital with my mom waiting through the hour(s) my dad is in surgery.  And then hours more that he'll be in recovery.  I'll also slip away for a bit to attend a funeral.  I know I'll need to be rested and mentally strong for tomorrow.  But here I am, writing a blog post about how I can't lay (lie?) in my bed any longer thinking while sleep settles on everyone else in the household and skips over me.

My dad had hip replacement surgery a few months ago.  It didn't heal the way he'd expected, and instead got infected.  Tomorrow, they'll open it back up and flush out the infection and he'll start recuperating all over again.  He's a gardener and a walker.  He used to be a runner, but since the arthritis in his hip became unbearably painful, he slowed to walk four miles per day, rather than jogging his daily six.  It's been a rough couple of months for a man who likes to stay moving and independent.  It's been hard for him to watch as my uncles take turns tilling his garden and as I plant the bean seeds and my mom and sons hoe the weeds.

I'm up praying and thinking and my stomach is in sickly knots, knowing he's worried and dreading tomorrow.

And then my brain hops around to all sorts of other thoughts.  Cleaning my house.  Worrying about working full-time and leaving my baby.  Writing.  How I thought I'd have so much time to write this summer, and haven't managed much at all.   Wondering if that one brilliant novel will ever come to me and pour out of my fingertips, on to my laptop, like water from a faucet.  Now, if water really were to cascade over the keys of my computer, I suppose that would be horrendously ill-fated for my novel, since I can't imagine writing it long-hand.

***
My son just came into the room to tell me about his nightmare about Goo Monsters at the beach and how we ended up with the wrong dog.  The Goo Monsters were shooting at dogs and making them disappear.  The monsters were turning themselves into dogs and could walk through walls and stuff.  I'm not sure what else he mumbled, but I'm assuming we ended up taking a Goo Monster Dog home instead of our Toby.  So, I'm off to cuddle my six-year-old, to rid his dreamy head of goo and monsters.  Hopefully he will share some of his sleep with me.

Nighty night!