Goodnight, sweetheart.

Insomnia's a glorious beast to carry around, I think. I've always had trouble sleeping and I know exactly why, and no amount of redirected thinking, cognitive therapy, warm milk/tea/bourbon, or properly-ventilated bedrooms is going to make it any easier for me to pass out at night. My mind just doesn't have an off switch. When I was younger I used to read when I couldn't sleep. I'd stay up really late with a book (usually something crappy and mindless that I secretly loved in spite of my purported braininess--even as a kid I would read, like, Anne Frank by day and the Fabulous Five under cover of darkness), alternately willing myself to fall asleep and worrying that reading garbage was going to make me dumber, wishing I could drift into dreamland and getting terrified that my recurring nightmare (Predatory ghost statues in my grandparents' yard! I blame that scene in Prince Caspian where they go back to Narnia and end up in the creepy overgrown courtyard and realize how much time has passed since they left; this seriously terrified me as a kid.) would rear its ugly head. Even when I didn't have anything to worry about, I worried about worrying. Needless to say, this process has never stopped, and I still associate bedtime reading with some mild form of panic attack. I aspire to be part of a case study someday.

All of which is to say, it's my last night in Ottawa and I can't sleep. I've packed all my V.C. Andrews paperbacks and drunk all my mini bottles of rum. There's no furniture left in my house and nothing to look at except a cat curled up on an air conditioner box like an extra in an after school special where a perfectly nice girl goes to a crack house and feels sorry for the crack dealer's cat before she does crack for the first time. Clearly I have also lost my ability to carry a metaphor to its logical conclusion.

Anyway, this is as good a headspace as any to end my time in our nation's capital--quietly freaking out and wishing I had something to read. That's pretty much the way I roll.



...and speaking of Shanana, did you know they played at Woodstock? According to a problematic Wikipedia article, it's true!

I'm pretty sure that last statement is all it takes for the library police to come and revoke my credentials.