New Besties!

I feel that Christina and I have a new common link, which is Insomnia.

It has recently decided to show me it's full force, and I wonder how it can go on.

The best story took place on a dark, cold night in the middle of a wind-swept rural city.

I stayed at a friend's house pretty late for me - 1 am - and crawled exhausted into bed about thirty minutes later, ready for some brilliant sleep which I've been lacking for at least a week.

At 5:30, instead of the usual 3:30, I awoke to the insatiable itching (seriously, what is this?) and I had to get out of my bed. I was hot, too, as if I'm picking up on my mom's hot flashes or something.

I stumbled my way down to the couch in the family room - it's pitch black in there and has an air machine that I thought could help me sleep; I love the white noise. Just before I collapsed on the couch, I noticed the blanket, which has a few white spots, appeared to be strewn on the couch, not folded, where I knew it been before we all went to bed.

As my misty mind processed the out-of-place blanket, a groggy voice said, "What?! Did you come down to sleep here?"

It was my mom.

"Yeah," I answered, "but I'll go somewhere else."

"No, you can lay here, I should probably shift positions anyway. What time is it."

"6:10"

"I have to get up in thirty minutes, anyway."

But I walked out of the room, found another couch, unplugged all the Christmas candles in the windows and shut the blinds to block out our the blinding streetlight.

Five minutes passed before Mom walked through on her way upstairs.

Twenty minutes later I heard her alarm go off.

Shortly after that, I heard Jackson - my huge black and white cat - calling to anyone in the house with long, distressed cries from the garage. The horrible windstorm outside had him in a panic. I brought him in for a while but he couldn't sit still. He paced along the back of the couch (this time in the basement - another couch), sniffed the edge of the door, cried to go outside, and paced on the blanket I had wrapped around me. When I let him out into the tornado outside, he stood there for a few seconds and wanted right back in.

I got him to calm down before I had to turn him back out into the garage. And I slept after that, overslept my alarm, that is.

What is wrong with me?