Brace for impact and get the she’s-a-bad-girls a-ready: I can’t sleep at night without meds, and it pisses me off.

There are a number of things in my life which have made me admit that there’s better living through modern chemistry. (I should say here that any and all herbal remedies are about better living through classical chemistry, so hush up. It’s all about tinkering with that cascade of molecules in your brain; I would be psyched to drink a tea . . . if it worked. What, you think I haven’t tried it? Glad it works for you, you lucky thing.)

In my natural, untampered-with brain state, I can eventually indeed fall asleep by about 4 a.m.: I just don’t stay that way. I awake often, and spend long stretches either in that almost-asleep&dreaming state, or chasing the critter I call the “3 a.m. squirrel” (regardless of time of arrival), who nibbles you awake and runs about in your head, largely sowing a path of destruction.

After a while, I tell myself and El Rodento that the time-honored advice of just getting up is what’s happening, and I do; most often I get some writing done. My head and face are tingly, my muscles are throbbing, my eyes are dry–and everything else screams in unison that less than six hours=not enough sleep–

–but it doesn’t matter. I’ll stay up for at least an hour, and then by the time I can go back to bed, I’ve got maybe an hour before the alarm lets me out of hell, so I can wake up and (in this non-drug scenario) hide in a dark room trying not to puke from the migraine.

Thus the medication. Ah, modern chemistry . . .

My being pissed-off isn’t because Drugs Are Bad. Golly gee, everybody is supposed to be able to SLEEP, right? Easy as falling off that log you’re sawing. I feel like I’ve failed a course.

Even with meds, nothing is certain. I had an unusually brisk romp with the 3 a.m. squirrel this morning, concerning a somewhat complicated and highly detailed scenario starring a yet-unborn kitten and a subsequent trip to the ER. (Not directly involving said kitten–as I said, it was complicated.) I think things will go better if I scruff myself and get up as soon as the beady-eyed little buck-toothed fiend shows up. I do in fact have writing to do. The squirrel gives decent dictation.

Poor kitten. I’m sure it won’t do anything of the sort.

Please note that the kitten as such does not exist. The 3 a.m. squirrel, on the other hand, is chewing it a little kitten basket out of worthless Civil War banknotes.

OK, so far neither the kidlet nor myself has found a job, and I’m doing angst about it. Last night it took the form of waking up at 3 a.m. and obsessing about all the tragedy both real and projected I could dredge up. (It’s the “3 a.m. squirrel” because it runs round and round in your brain.) I called it quits when one scenario started with the kitten I’m planning to get this Christmas, and ended with my trying to scam the ER out of some opthalmic antibiotic ointment. I’m leaving the several intervening steps out of it, because we try to run a family blog here. Just note that again, said kitten is currently a twinkle in some tomcat’s eye right now, and we’ll move on.

It’s probably as well that the storyfying part of my brain is kicked on high, because Dark Crimson Corners is officially off my desk until it goes pro (heh; see angst) and Max is well underway. I’ve been underwhelmed by my plot idea for this, partly because Max told me I had to come up with one and I’m unfortunately my protagonists’ bitch whether I have one ready or not. But after a couple of months of flailing around in backstory, I’m finally getting good to go, and it looks like it’ll be ok-so-far. The thing that’s been hardest to shut off is the fear of Too Longness–DCC ended up 320K, I think–after cuts. I’m going to do my damnedest to ignore it while I write, and edit down later.

Meanwhile, the Achilles continues to heal (sorry), meaning I can now interact with the sweaty beauties of the Canterbrigian summer. (As opposed to the Jamaican Planiferous summers of the previous three years, which were merely sweaty.) My couch potato-hood lasted long enough for me to watch the entirety of Buffy on Netflix; it’s kind of embarrassing how comparatively little writing I got done that month+. I made a New Year’s resolution to update this blog once a week; this obviously hasn’t panned out, ’cause I’s lazy. And this catch-up doesn’t count, so I suppose it’s on to Plinky, which is the writing equivalent of that workout you have to add on because of Aunt Inez’ carrot cake at the family reunion. Hidey ho!