My Brain At 4 AM

The story behind the story (if that makes sense):

Over the weekend Zach (the fiancé) and I drove three hours (each way) to visit my sweet, amazing, precious niecey-poo!

sweet, amazing, precious niecey-poo
(1.5 yrs old)

 

My sister and her husband train and show horses (Robertson Show Horses) and live on a beautiful horse ranch in Ocala, Florida.  We don’t get to visit often as they travel all over the country showing horses and are rarely home for more than a few days at a time.  This past weekend my sister’s husband was at a show in Virginia and my sister asked if we could come babysit because she still had to do work on the ranch while he was gone.  I have been uber stressed lately so I jumped on the opportunity to get out of town and spend quality time with that sweet baby.  It helps that I now have a dependable vehicle, thanks to my accident, in the past we had to rent a car because we didn’t think the old junker could make it three hours each way.  I digress.

The story: My brain at 4 a.m.

Saturday night we didn’t go to bed until close to midnight, we were babysitting til 10:30ish and the only chance we had to catch up with my sister all weekend was after she got home that night.

We both fell asleep within seconds of closing our eyes, well I did anyway.  Then, eyes still closed and mostly still asleep, I start thinking about how I need to pee.  Whenever this happens I try desperately to push the thought from my mind, but it’s pointless.  Needing to pee invades every thought I try to replace it with until I absolutely have to get up and take care of it.  I think my bladder is what initially woke me, but then I realized that my back hurt so bad it felt like my bones were actively disintigrating.  And I was so congested I think my entire brain was filled with mucus, and my throat was scratchy and sore too.  Awesome.  So finally I get up, eyes barely open in an effort to remain half asleep, I make my way to the bathroom and back.

What I thought was a wonderfully comfortable bed when I laid my head down to sleep became a bed of nails.  My back does this to me from time to time (I’m way too young for this shit), and no amount of over the counter pain killers can touch the pain.  I try all of my back-cracking techniques to no avail, laid on one side, then the other side, then on my back, pillow between my knees, pillow under my back.  After about an hour of repositioning I gave in to the probability that going back to sleep was null.  I looked at the clock, it was five o’clock in the morning.

It’s kind of amazing what goes through one’s mind in this situation. Normally I just lay there and let it all dance around in my head until I either fall back asleep or it’s time to get up for the day; but this time I decided to jot down all of my great ideas on my phone’s “reminders” app. The following is what I came up with, ideas for blog posts:

• horoscope post (not sure why I thought this was a good one)
• personal statement (I have to write one for grad school and wanted all of your wonderful suggestions, or I will just post it once I’ve written it)
• living in a resort town
• addiction and prescriptions – depression meds (this could be interesting)
• depression is expensive (it really is)
• driving school (what I learned from my 4 hour online driving course which I took after the accident to avoid points on my DL)
• word of the week (pick one of Dictionary.com’s words of the day from the week and write about it on Fridays)

I’m brilliant, really. Now don’t go stealing any of my ideas, I know they’re riveting!

I never did fall back asleep that night. I got out of bed around 7 o’clock, even the baby was still sleeping, so I stepped outside to relish in the quiet beauty of the ranch. I was not disappointed; the temperature was cool and damp with a low fog covering the fields and horses, birds were chirping their welcome of the new day and I felt a sense of peace around me despite the congestion and pain in my back. I wanted to stay in that moment, though I knew it wouldn’t last, so I took a picture and soaked it all in as best I could. Looking at that picture today I can feel my bare feet on the cool ground, I close my eyes and can see those beautiful horses blanketed in fog. I think I will keep that with me for a long time to come.

7 a.m. on the ranch
Ocala, FL

Wishing you all a pleasant week ~ XOXO

*I would love to hear your thoughts on my blog post ideas! Do any of them sound especially interesting?