Perchance to sleep ...

Well, I'm going to have to resort to pharmaceuticals to get some sleep, I think.

I wake up at 4 or 4:30 every morning and then can't go back to sleep. Like my father, I start to think. If I don't fall back asleep immediately, my mind begins racing and I start thinking of everything; the last day, stuff that wants doing, random worries. With my Pervasive Prenatal Paranoia of late it's ridiculous.

So I get up.

This morning I was letting the dogs out and putting on a load of clothes at 4:10am.

Now, I normally get up at 5:30, but losing an hour of sleep every night is wearing on me. One of the more unpleasant results is that I get 'run down' by the evening and tend to be irritable, snap at the children, and generally behave like a cranky toddler who needs a nap.

So why don't I nap, you ask? Well, I can't. I'm just not a napper. I can't just lie down in daylight and go to sleep, unlike, oh, say, my Dad or Evil Genius Husband, both of whom can -- and will -- doze off right where they're sitting. No warning or preamble: awake one moment, snoring the next.

(This drives me insane, by the way, absolutely mad. There's nothing like being so tired you can barely keep your eyes open, but can't sleep because the children are awake, and trying to hold a convo with someone only to find that he's deeply, blissfully, effin' asleep. If a woman were to fall asleep while a man was talking to her, there'd be public outrage!)

Anyway, I should be tired enough tonight. The new bunk bed is here and needs assembling, and I got the mattresses yesterday.

What a nightmare. Getting the mattresses, I mean.

First off, I had to drive the truck. The truck is a stick shift. My knee and stick shifts do NOT get on.

I also had to wait until EGH got home at 4:15 then had to tear into town since the place closes at 5:00. My plan was to take my time leaving (to come back home) so as to miss all the traffic.

I forgot it was Labour Day weekend.

Well, the traffic was bad going into town and a dense, steady, stream coming out of town. I got about halfway there and the traffic starts backing up: there's been an 'incident' (the cool, new, traffic sign ala LA Story told me so*). Well crap. So I'm inching along, cursing because my knee is already killing me, when I hear:

"CLANG! Clatter! Ting, ting, ting, ting, ting!"

"Oh, great," I think, "My effin' muffler just fell off." I immediately started trying to get over (of course I was in the far left of four lanes) and the mindless idiots bent on holiday were making it very hard. I got diagonally across the two middle lanes when the truck choked down.

Perfect.

Now traffic is seriously backing up. I'm blocking the two center lanes and now convinced that my entire exhaust is off at the manifold (I've had cars before that wouldn't hardly run if they were venting right out of the manifold - I'm sure that Dr. Blue's Dad could explain it). Finally, miraculously, it decided to crank and I limped over to the verge.

I want to interject at this point that I had Bitty Girl with me. Since I knew this trip would be longer, I switched her turn with the Incredible Bulk's, taking him with me to WalMart Thursday so she could go yesterday.

I get really really anxious when I have car trouble and the babes are with me. I've been driving/riding in older cars my whole life. A good portion of that time has been spent on the side of the road. I'm used to it. The advantages of this are 1) I'm good at fixing cars and I've fixed my share, alone, on the roadside, and 2) I can handle it when my cars break down. I know what to do. I can assess the situation and solve it and not go to pieces.

But when the babies are with me I break down. I feel super vulnerable and terrified for them. Waiting in the hot sun for a ride? Fine for me, unacceptable for my child. Walking for help? Hard for me, impossible for a toddler or baby.

Of course, in this day of cell phones, I've never been stranded more than a half hour. We also keep our early model cars in good shape so that this sort of thing is rare. But it doesn't take away that jolt of panic I feel when my car has gone wonkey and there's a wee person with me.

Yesterday it turned out to be nothing. As soon as I walked around the truck I realized the exhaust was fine. It was just the bracket that's supposed to hold the spare tyre (I keep the spare in the bed of the truck). A lovely couple stopped almost immediately -- they were in an enormous, beautiful travel trailer and towing their SUV (that's how big this thing was, this guy could have been a NASCAR driver) -- and the husband, whom I couldn't see, simply stopped it right in the middle of traffic while his wife opened the window and inquired if they could help. It was v. sweet.

The rest of the trip after that was pretty boring.** The mattress place didn't have my order (despite my having ordered it on Monday and scheduled pick up for yesterday) and I had to get all "I didn't just drive all the way from Newberry county in hellish traffic to leave here without two twin mattresses" on them. We finally got loaded up (overseen by a v. serious Bitty, perched on the truck box) and crept back home in even worse traffic since everyone had left work early to pack the car and head out of town at precisely the same moment.

At any rate, we finally made it home just in time for the babes to go to bed thought they were unable to sleep excited into a frenzy as they were about their new sleeping arrangements and impatient to have them magically put to gether right then!

Episode 2: the big switcheroo, tomorrow. Now, where did I put that screwdriver?

*Found out this morning in the paper that the 'incident' on the motorway was a man threatening to do himself injury. I actually had been wondering this very thing because when we finally made it up to the point of incidentage the cops were milling about on the bridge looking down at the wide Congaree River.

** Never did discover why the truck had choked down. I had to change to the back tank several miles up the road which makes me wonder if there was trash in the petrol there at the bottom of the tank.