Last night I had a dream about cookies. Specifically generic brand “duplex” sandwich cookies, not Oreos. You know, the ones that are vanilla on one side and chocolate on the other and oh so tasty?. So, in my dream I was trying to ride a bike from New Orleans to Orlando with members of my family being pulled in a trailer behind me. I got about halfway to Orlando when I realized I was starving and pulled over onto the shoulder of the bike interstate. Realizing that I hadn’t packed a lunch for myself, I asked my family what they had and someone handed me a baggie of duplex sandwich cookies. I ate the hell out of those cookies and when I woke up I really really wanted to eat the hell out of some in my waking life.

So today at lunch, after managing to perform a miracle and get my power turned back on, I stopped at the grocery store and bought a healthy meal of chicken tenders and a pack of duplex cookies. This was lovely except for one small glitch: did you know that stores only sell duplex cookies in packs that are two pounds in size? Two pounds! That’s a lot of freaking dream cookies. In fact, I don’t think I even ate two pounds worth of duplex cookies in my dream and you know I burned two pounds worth of calories towing my family from NOLA to Orlando. Somehow I showed restraint and only ate three cookies from the pack. At this rate the remaining duplexes will be soggy and stale long before I finish the pack. I should have saved them and strapped the whole pack to my back for my marathon. Instant cookie dispenser and I wouldn’t have needed a single gu for the race. I would surely bet the Kenyans with this plan.

On a note that I’m going to pretend is totally random and unrelated to the fact that I have two pounds of cookies staring at me from my desk, my bras are feeling a bit tight in the cup area, which is normally a sign that I’m chunking up a bit, but this time I don’t think it’s that. Because I am in denial. I think my boobs are getting bigger because they never re-pressurized from our plane ride home. My boobs are suffering from some kind of ill pressurized jet lag. And so help me, if you try to tell me differently, I will come over there and smack you upside the head with my pack of cookies.

In our household typically jparks is the insomniac. He’ll stay awake all night if I let him, playing on the computer or on the wii. His internal clock seems to be set to be nocturnal and I have to beat it into submission to get him to come to bed with me. But for some reason, for the past few days, our clocks seemed to have switched places in some Freaky Friday move that has me staying up all night and letting that bastard jparks sleep soundly.

It started on Thursday when I had a nightmare that I had gotten shot in the head and jparks wouldn’t take me to the hospital. Except I wasn’t really shot in the head so much as I woke up, in my dream, with a hole in the back of my head and I assumed I had been shot. Jparks told me that “No, if you wake up with a hole in your head you haven’t been shot. You’re fine and you just have to live with it.” I spent the rest of the dream poking at the hole and suggesting that maybe I should you know, have someone like a doctor look at it. It’s safe to say that I woke up in a cold sweat and pissed off at jparks.

Since then my nights have only gotten worse. Friday night I had dreams of earthquakes (no doubt because we had one that night). From Saturday night I don’t remember specific dreams, just that I tossed and turned all night and never seemed to really sleep. Finally we hit Sunday and I thought for sure I would sleep like a rock.

On Sunday I went for my long run and, to motivate myself during it, I kept chanting “You’ll finally sleep tonight.” I got home that evening and was exhausted. I showered, ate dinner (and then a cinnamon roll and maybe part of a cookie. stop judging me), and headed to bed. Yes, I know all that sugar couldn’t have helped the no sleeping situation, but shouldn’t a day of running and not much sleep in the three prior days cancel out the sugar?!? Apparently not.

Last night was the same situation, jparks and I got in bed and I listened as he fell asleep. After 30 minutes I honestly thought about waking him up, but figured why bother; I was too tired to have sex and too cranky to have a conversation, so I let him be. God, I should have woken him up just so he could suffer too.

Today I have bags under my eyes. Big, black bags that are so attractive I don’t know how random strangers are resisting approaching me to make out with them. My head feels like it’s in a fog and I would slap a puppy if it meant I could take a nap. I’m hoping tonight my body finally cries “uncle!” and I get to sleep. To stack the odds a bit more in my favor, I’m going running this evening. I’m going to run until I can’t take another step, in the hopes that the extra bit of exercise will guarantee tiredness. And so help me, if this doesn’t work I might just hit myself in the head with a frying pan.

Or do you have some sleep inducing trick that works like a charm and that you’re willing to share? Please, save me from one more sleepless night and from the pain of a frying pan slap. And by sharing it, you save yourself from one more rambling post where I whine incoherently about not sleeping. See, we all win.

Since we’ve come back from our mini vacation I have not been able to get a good night’s sleep. It’s horrible and I can’t take it any longer. I need some sleep, dammit! Good, quality, deep sleep, preferably 8 hours worth, but I’ll take 7 if that’s all that’s available.

Part of the problem is that I can’t get comfortable. No matter how I lay it’s not the right position and even my favorite positions feel uncomfortable. Add Lily and jparks both trying to sleep pressed up against me and you have even more discomfort and heat. Good lord, those two are like thermal heaters that I can’t escape.

And then there are the nightmares. First I dreamt jparks took me to a haunted house. I had been before and I knew it wasn’t scary, but they had updated it and added in robot dogs. Robot dogs that were supposed to pretend attack, but they were malfunctioning and were really attacking. I was trying to fight them off but it wasn’t working and they kept biting me with their metal pointy teeth. Stupid robot dogs.

The next night I dreamt I had someone following me and they kept grabbing me. And it was even one of those dreams that make you jump in your sleep. Like when you dream you’re falling and you kind of seize up and wake up. That’s how this dream was. I would run from the guy, he would catch up, grab me, I would jump, wake myself up, ask jparks if he had just grabbed me, ask him to go lock the front door, and then try desperately to go back to sleep. Once asleep the whole stupid dream would start again.

I have an acupuncturist appointment today, maybe I can ask her to put a needle somewhere on me to guarantee a good night’s sleep.

Last night Jason and I went to a Toad the Wet Sprocket concert with some friends. The concert was great, we loved the venue, and we saw Glen Phillips’ daughter twirl around with her dress over her head. (Glen Phillips= Lead singer of Toad, his daughter was maybe 5 and was very cute dancing around to her father’s music). After the concert we went to La Fondue for dessert and this is where the evening took a turn for the worse.

La Fondue wants you to think it is a culinary delight nestled in cute downtown Saratoga, but in reality it is a den of gluttony created to give people stomach aches. Don’t believe me? In their bathrooms they have an industrial sized bottle of Tums. See, den of gluttony. The problem was that I didn’t know La Fondue was a stomach ache waiting to happen, I thought it was a cute culinary delight. And when we ordered our chocolate fondues I indulged. I indulged quite a bit. Okay, I went all out and ate more than one human should be allowed to. You know how the fat guy in Seven was forced to eat until his stomach popped? Well, I was one chocolate dipped rice krispy ball away from that point.

Don’t get me wrong, the fondue was wonderful. But maybe it should have been less wonderful so I wouldn’t be forced to eat a boat load of it. By the end of the meal, I was heading straight into a cranky, chocolate coated coma. I was filled to the brim with chocolate, marshmallows, and snickers bars (yeah, they give you snickers bars to dip in chocolate. Overkill? Yes. Awesome? Hell yeah!) and all I wanted to do was sleep.

When we got home I whined about my stomach for a few minutes and then crashed into a sleep that contained some incredibly bizarre dreams. My favorite dream was about Jason being completely bald on top of his head and growing in the sides really long so he could do a comb over. But it was a really greasy, gross comb over but nothing anyone told him would change his mind about it. He loved his comb over and wasn’t going to get rid of it. One night I tried to clip the comb over to a normal length and he woke up and was upset. His beloved comb over was almost no more! So all scissors were locked up at night and he would hide the key. I woke up around this point, probably out of fear, and had to roll over and check his head. Hair still there? Check.

This morning when I woke up I still felt wretched from all of that chocolate. I thought I was a dessert pro, but obviously I am not. The sugar hangover this morning was just as bad as any other hangover I’ve ever had. I barely made it through the first part of the work day. And even after lunch and plenty of caffeine I still just want to go to bed. Stupid La Fondue.

Last night I dreamt I was at a parade in which Ben Folds was going to be on a makeshift float. Everyone was going on and on about how they know him and they such good friends with him but when his float passed he called out my name and handed me a CamelBak full of rum punch. Take that all you freaks who thought you were friends wih him! Ben Folds knows MY name and he gave ME rum punch!

Last night I dreamt I was Mo Rocca and that I was being attacked by monsters that could only be defeated by dumping cheddar cheese sauce on them.

I don’t know what I ate before I went to bed (no, it wasn’t a Warm Delight as mention in my previous post) but I think I shouldn’t eat it again after midnight.