My mind, in one night

It's 8am, on a Monday, I don't have to go to work, yet I am awake. Not a happy bunny right now.

Most of the time I'm one of these sleepers that as soon as my head hits the pillow, I'm gone. Unfortunately this wasn't the case last night as all manner of thoughts and sounds invaded my head meaning that I felt restless and alert until two o'clock this morning. I don't actually remember another recent time when I was able to stay awake until 2am because as a side effect to my quarter-life crisis I now like to be tucked up in bed by midnight at the latest. There's no raving anymore, getting off my tits and dancing like a twat until the early hours; there are very few late night living room rendezvous and conversations that go past 11pm; and there's definitely a severe lack of all night drinking at pub lock-ins. All things I was happy to do just two years ago, but now when read back sound more like a page out of Trainspotting (but in a well written English accent) rather than something I'd get up to. Now, I'm generally out for the count by 10:30pm and grouchy if I don't get my eight hours.

I'm not entirely sure what kept me up last night, perhaps a mixture of things: the excitement of going to Australia in two days, the relief of getting my bike back, the loneliness of being in bed on my own after sharing it with The Boy for the last three nights. The latter is a weird one - like he's never here for more than a couple of nights, but after he goes I always feel a bit more vulnerable and scared that somethings going to happen, so it usually takes me a little longer to settle on a Sunday night. Anyway, enough of the soppy stuff...

The long and short of it was that my mind was racing with these thoughts, then other thoughts from them grew, such as what's going to happen about the leaky ceiling in my room? When I'm in Aus what time should I take my pill because it has to be taken at the same time every day, but everything there is upside down time wise? What is the time difference between here and there? What do I need to pack/buy? When I go to get a new bike lock for my bike, will I be able to take it into the shop with me so it doesn't get nicked?

My little brain was working over time to think up all of these questions, but it wasn't bothering to logically magic up any of the answers, so I tried a few well tested methods to put an end to it. First, I wanked. I seem to have that bloke skill that after I climax I can nod off into a satisfied sleep with a smile on my face. Unfortunately that didn't work last night, perhaps because of my already erotically filled weekend so my satisfaction metre was at it's limit.

Next I read. At the minute I'm leafing my way through Danny Wallace's, Friends Like These - a light hearted tale about refinding forgotten friends, which I'm enjoying but I think he uses too many itals, so every other word is really emphasised and you end up reading as if you sound a bit special. Generally a couple of pages will do it, not because it's a boring book, but I'm just not very good at reading before bed with soft lighting. It makes me sleepy. Apparently it wasn't going to help last night either.

Running out of ideas, my last ditch attempt was to convince myself that I was really tired, think about sleeping and count. Not sheep, when I count I'm not sure it is anything, it's just the monotony of numbers that sends me off. I guess for this reason I could never be a mathematician...well that and the fact that I am crap at math.

It started to work, I had my fan blowing a nice breeze on me, my eyes were feeling heavy, the numbers were steadily going up, sleep was so close I could smell it , finally, at 1:30am.

Ahh, bliss.

Mind is turning off now...

No more silly questions, or thinking...

Just sleep...

If only that rustling noise would stop...

Hang on. Rustling noise? Shit, perhaps that mouse is back.

Bollocks, I can't sleep if I know there's a mouse in my fucking room. I'm gonna have to put the light on and see.

Flicking the light on woke me up again instantly, like sleep had never been knocking on my eyelids. I got up out of bed, turned off the fan so I could hear things properly and walked over to where I thought I heard the noise. Nope, couldn't see anything and the noise had sort of stopped, so I froze to see if it would return. It did, by the doors that led to the back garden - I have doors in my room that open straight to the back garden, which is why it's totally plausible that there was a mouse in my room - then my mind turned to my bike being outside. No, Rose, shake your head, refocus. Mouse. Right, yes, mouse.

I definitely couldn't see anything, but there was a tapping at the door. I don't like noises that tap at the door, especially if I'm going to be faced with some sort of unsuspecting, startled animal, but the only way to find out was to pull back the curtains.

As I raised my hand, and my fingers twitched in anticipation of pulling back the red fabric that obstructed my view of the big, bad night time world of London. I heard a second noise as well as the rustling. It sounded like a fence wobbling. Perhaps it was our local fox, which I'm told often tries to scale it to get into our yard. Bollocks, was I about to come face to face with a fox? I'm not very good with foxes. The last one I stared out had a look in his eye that said, "If you come a step closer to me I'll rip off both your fucking legs and give you rabies just for the fun of it." I hate city foxes. They all look like they're on crack.

Anyway, enough was enough. I needed to find out if there was a mouse in my room, or a fox outside the door so I could stop the pounding in my heart and just GET SOME FUCKING SLEEP.

I manned up, grabbed the curtain and swiped it back faster than the Sundance Kid would draw his gun (maybe).

There was nothing outside. More importantly there was nothing inside, no small creatures, not even a spider. There was just the rain, which was now blowing onto the windows of my door. Aahh so that explained it all!

*Sigh* well that was that. Everything had been checked out and it was fine. It was fine, but it was now 2am and I was pissed with myself that I wasn't asleep yet. Back to bed, back to counting, the noise was just the rain, all other thoughts can wait and finally sleep came.

Today I  think I'll need to put even more concealer on around my eyes than normal to cover the extra dark circles. And why does this sort of thing always happen when you've got so much shit to do the next day? Cleaning, finalisation of job application, list-making of all the things I need to pack. I fear a granny nap this afternoon may be in order, but please don't judge me for it just wish me sweet dreams.

RoseC -x-