My Insomniac Mind at 4:38am

Unclinch my jaw. I need to remember to tell the team about jury duty. I should throw a load of towels and underwear into the wash before we leave tomorrow. Did BH start the dishwasher? I didn't hear it. Not comfortable. Got to write a check for the cleaning people. What else have I put on my credit card this month besides those tickets and that lunch? Where is that bin in the garage with the Geej's winter stuff? Unclinch my jaw. If F doesn't like tomatoes, I'll have to modify that recipe. But what else would be good in it? I need to make an appointment with the dermatologist. Call the endocronologist tomorrow. What does my schedule look like tomorrow? I know there's the team meeting, but there's something else...in the afternoon. Not comfortable, roll over. Shave my legs tomorrow. New razor blade. Where is that special floss that gets behind my retainer? Unclinch my jaw. The ceiling over the bathtub. The shelves. Breakable things. Storage room. Kitchen paint. New faucet. Call Jeff. Or email. The weekend of the 20th? That's the best weekend. That police officer. Honor flag. Fitting tribute. Just doing his job. Unclinch my jaw. What else on that playlist? Music lessons for Geej. Schedule? Which beach house? Need to book it. Don't nag. Should email Mel about happy hour. Miss her and Kim. Mell to Temperance? Call Thelma. Hope Skye's mom will respond tomorrow. Worried about exective support. What does "They think it's done," mean? Alarming. 529 rollover. Confusing paperwork. Unclinch my jaw. Ireland. When? Does he still suck his thumb? San Antonio. About $14,000. Wonder what I could get for it. Legroom. Laura's house. Charleston. Why can't I sleep?! Legalzoom. Finish. How much? Can't do everything. Dishwasher. Laundry. Re-fold and organize. Unclinch my jaw. Dental bill. Just ignore. Throw away? File? Clean out files. Shredding. Uncomfortable. Change sheets. More laundry. It's not a closet. No more pedicures. She's going to be pissed. Pictures. Carnival. Unclinch my jaw.

My jumbled brain.

Y'all, I cannot focus for shit. I'm sitting here at work, and I have a shit ton of stuff I need to be doing, but I simply can't get my mind to sit still long enough to accomplish anything. I'm blaming this state on several different factors:

1. I'm having holy-shit-I'm-back-from-vacation syndrome. The world didn't stop spinning while I was out of the office. Au contraire: I have a bunch more work than when I left for my long weekend away. Diving back into it head first sort of erases any post-vacation relaxation buzz I might still have, and so I resist.

2. I'm not sleeping well at all. I'm FALLING asleep just fine--it's the STAYING asleep that's the issue. For instance, last night I woke up at about 4:15am to pee, and boom, I was wide awake and never made it back to sleep. Instead, I just lay there in bed, staring into the darkness having my body heat sucked up by the two cats snuggled up next to me.

3. I've got a LOT on my mind. One thing a good bout of relaxation does is fill my head with ideas and "I should be doing X" types of schemes. I feel energized and creative and inspired, and then I come back home to the laundry and the parenting and the work and it all just becomes a big, unproductive and intimidating thoughtwad in my head. Next thing you know, I'm frustrated and stressed, and any and all benefit I got from the aforementioned relaxing and whatnot is completely erased.

My hope is that the next time I check in with you people I'll be better rested, clearer headed, and will have some of the 5 jillion things on my To Do list. But I wouldn't count on it.

In the mean time, here's a picture of some of the javelinas (collard peccary) that came and visited our little desert house.

And now for a zoomed-in shot:

Crazy little creatures, no?

Insomnia Post Facto

I woke up at 4:39am this morning. I needed to pee. So I got up and went to the bathroom and took my thyroid hormone, drank some water, and got back in bed. And then I just lay there, awake. My eyes were closed, but my mind was racing. Then I realized I was cold. Got up and shut the window in the bedroom (it was cracked) and got back in bed. And then I just lay there, awake. Mind going a million miles an hour again. I thought of a really good stand up joke. I thought about Christmas lists. I thought about work. I thought about The Geej and BH. Doug came and snuggled up with me. The minutes passed, and sleep wouldn't come. I thought of my friend Michelle who lives in Portland. I thought of Chicago. I thought of how much being awake during prime sleeping time pissed me off. I unclenched my jaw. My stomach growled. The minutes passed. I wondered if I should get up. I realized that I'd forgotten the stand up joke I'd come up with earlier. I thought about singing and music I love.

And then it was 5:49am, just 14 minutes before my alarm clock was due to go off, so I got up. Went to the computer to write, and the mind that was racing just moments earlier was utterly and completely blank. So I surfed. Checked Facebook and Twitter and my Google Reader hoping that my previous thoughts would return, but no such luck.

I'm still sad about all of the words I lost during that walk from the bedroom to the computer. Where did they go? Why is that half-wakeful state so intensely prolific, and then when I'm fully awake--poof--it's gone.

Sigh.

Oh well, at least I managed to successfully complete NaBloPoMo by posting at least something every day this month. Yay me!! My hope is that I'll keep up the frequency, but we'll have to see. As we now know, when I'm fully awake, words escape me. Maybe I'll try sleep-blogging.

(This was my 1,075th post, by the way. I think I should get a cupcake or something.)

Insomnia + Wireless = Post on Cars!

It's nearly 5am. I've been tossing and turning since about 3:40, and I finally decided to say, "Fuck it," and get up. So I've got some time to kill between now and when The Geej comes and crawls in bed to "snugguh," so I give you: The Kars of Karla May!

[All the photos are grabbed from Google image search, so no, they're not the actual cars of Karla May, but they're close enough.]



Car #1: 1984 Buick Skyhawk


This photo looks a lot like my car, actually. It was white with a navy interior. I freakin' LOVED this car. My stepdad had some business associate whose son was shipping off to join the Navy or something, and was no longer going to need his car. So my mom and he bought his gently used Skyhawk (it had about 8,500 miles on it) and presented it to me in November, 1985--3 months before my actual 16th birthday. It sat in the driveway taunting me. I wanted to drive it SO badly, but since I didn't have a license yet, I was limited to jaunts around my neighborhood and the occasional trip to the grocery store for mom. Finally she relented to my whining, and I got to drive it to school. God, I thought I was cool.



For my birthday that year, my dad installed a bad ASS stereo--complete with new speakers and a power booster/equalizer. My Van Halen tapes sounded so damn awesome. My license plate was 185 RJP, so my car became known as the "Rockin' Jammin' Princess." Yep, I'm a dork. My dad also eventually tinted my windows and had some custom pinstriping done. In other words, he pimped my ride. I drove the SHIT out of this car. I was almost always the one who drove when my girlfriends and I went out on the weekends during high school, then I took it with me to college, so it logged many miles on the Longview to Austin (and back again) trip. When I traded it in for my next car, I actually cried. It was like saying goodbye to an old friend. But it was time to let her go so that I could move from coupe to sedan. And get a sunroof. And cruise control.


Car #2: 1990 Mitsubishi Galant LS

My dad got injured on the job, sued the company whose machinery he was working on when he was injured, got a $200,000 settlement, and in true white trash, never-had-money-before fashion, started spending it like a maniac. First, he bought himself a red corvette. Next, a house. And then me, a car. You have to understand how crazy this was: My dad was not the generous kind generally. Yes, he would do stuff like pimp my ride (as he did with car #1), but that was more because he was into cars and stereos than it was about giving me anything. So for him to even offer to give me a downpayment for a car would've floored me. But no--he went to the lot with me and paid cash for a brand new, totally loaded vehicle. I nearly shit myself. We bought it in Shreveport, LA while I was home on Christmas break in 1990. It was the end of they year, he was paying cash, and he was a hardcore negotiator, so he got a damn good deal on it. I can remember driving it back to Longview and into the driveway at my mom's house, and her being pretty blown away at house nice it was. It was seriously cool--dark navy, with a navy interior (again, the photo above looks a whole lot like my actual car). Top of the line stereo. Sunroof. Every bell and whistle available at that time.

I drove it back to Austin after the break, and the very first weekend I took it out and parked it near 6th street, someone keyed it from the front bumper to the back. Awesome.

Aside from teaching me that I never wanted another dark car with a dark interior while living in Texas, this car was the bomb diggity. Very reliable and comfortable. It saw me through the rest of college, through my underemployed slacker years, and on into grad school. I eventually put over 100,000 miles on it in 7 years. It was looking a little rough when I traded it in on car #3.


Car #3: 1997 Mitsubishi Mirage LS



What I really wanted was another Galant. But I couldn't afford one--unless of course I went for the base model with no bells, zero whistles. I'd become spoiled by my LS, so I wasn't willing to skimp out on features. So I downgraded to the Mirage, but was able to get it fully loaded. I got in in white with a grey interior. It was a cute, fun little car. And the biggest deal was it was the first car that I bought for myself. I mean, I went in and negotiated for it by myself. I made the car payments by myself. I (eventually) paid for the insurance by myself. I felt all kinds of grown up with the Mirage.

The week I bought it, I accidentally rear-ended some redneck in a 1964 Dodge Dart that had "I (heart) my Rottweiler" and Confederate flag bumper stickers. I was going all of 11 miles an hour when the accident happened, but it managed to bang up my front end. His tank of a car was fine, but he claimed he'd injured his neck. Whatthefuckever. State Farm gave him the "Oh no you DIDN'T" smackdown, and he crawled back to his trailer park in Irondale. But still: my brand new big girl car wasn't brand new anymore. It sucked. I eventually took the Mirage with me to Chicago where it took its fair share of city abuse, and then it came with me when I moved back to Austin. It was a good car--again, reliable and comfortable--but I didn't love it nearly as much as I did car #4.

Car #4: 2002 Volkswagen Jetta V6 Wagon

Holy God. After spending my entire car owning life driving 4-cylinder vehicles, the V6 Jetta was nothing short of a revelation. What a kick ass car. A real driver's car. And it was made in Germany--not in Mexico like so many Volkswagens now are--so it rolled off the same assembly line as the Audi Quatro, and it felt, well, German. I got a helluva deal on it: It had been a dealer's car, so it had 800 miles on it, and also, I bought it at the end of the model year, so they were willing to deal. Basically, I got the totally tricked out version of this car for the price of a used base model. Amazing stereo. Wood grain and chrome interior. Leather, heated seats. I wanted to totally make out with this car, I loved it so much. But alas, The Geej came along, and the backseat became terribly small (now that her big ass carseat was in there), and it was also terribly low and hard to get in and out of, so in late 2005, I (rather impulsively) traded it in on the current car.

Car #5: 2003 Nissan Murano SL
"Family car" is right. It was a lease-return vehicle with about 35,000 miles on it. Not as many bells and whistles as the Jetta (no sunroof--which I miss more than I thought I would, no leather interior, lame-ish stereo, missing cargo cover). But it's comfy, and there's plenty of room for two adults with actual human legs to sit in the backseat along with The Geej's carseat. One thing that bugs me though is that these cars (especially the silver ones like mine) are EVERYWHERE. They're so ubiquitous it's almost comical.

So there you have it. Now you can sleep more easily knowing what I've driven all my life.

Hi, I can't sleep. How are you?

My interview/promotions process thing happens Tuesday afternoon, and I've been prepping for it since early June. Early JUNE, people!!

It's one of those things that you just spend too much time on, and then you can't stop thinking about it. I mean, I've worked my ass off on this thing, but I just KNOW there's going to be someone (or maybe more than one) on that panel who are going to roll their eyes and think I've missed something major or that I was too long-winded or not specific enough or something else crummy. I want to go in there and hit it out of the park, but I'm nervous as hell. Not because I don't think I deserve this. I do. It's just because standing before a group of your peers and company leadership and taking command of the room in a very intimidating prospect. My head is splitting in two, and my stomach is in knots. I just want the whole thing to be behind me so I can get on with it, you know?

One of Geej's favorite teachers is going to babysit for her tomorrow night so my mother and I can go out for a celebratory dinner somewhere really nice. I'll be lucky if I don't fall face down in my plate of food from the sheer exhaustion of it all.

Speaking of The Geej, we had our pre-visit at her new school this afternoon, and it went great. She seems to be getting the concept of saying good-bye to her old school and that she's going to be going to a new school with new teachers and friends, etc. At least in theory, she's getting it. I'm sure it'll be meltdown city next week when all of this becomes a reality. Oh, and I got to write a check for $1,170 today to the new school. My God, we're poor right now.

Work. The baby. Money.

I'm really beginning to sound like a broken freakin' record.

Know what I want to do? Sit by a pool, all day, with a good book, my iPod, some hardcore sunscreen, and someone bringing me frosty beverages all day long. Then, at the end of the day, I want to have one of those hot stone massages, and be poured into a comfy hotel bed in a quiet room with light eliminating curtains. Then I want to sleep for at least 12 hours and eventually wake up to a gourmet meal from room service. And when I check out of this hotel/resort, I want the manager to say, "That's okay, Karla May. There'll be no charge for your stay. We just appreciate your business, and you looked like you could really use the rest. Please come back and see us again soon."