To sleep or not to sleep - that is the bummer!

3:15 a.m.: I wake up feeling a bit warm - is it night sweats or my husband? I toss off the covers, realize I'm cold again, and try to stop thinking about the fact that my son didn't get the part he wanted in the school play. Then I feel stupid for having stage mother-induced insomnia.

3:37 a.m.: Not sure if I really dozed off, but now I'm wide awake again. My husband makes that little pre-snoring noise, I nudge him gently to get him to roll onto his side, and he insists he wasn't asleep, how could he be snoring? I feel like a heel, but he says it's fine, cuddles against me and falls promptly asleep with his elbow jabbing into my side. And starts snoring. Not loudly, but enough to remind me that he's asleep and I'm not.

3:46 a.m.: I go to the computer, figuring a couple of boring solitaire games will make me drowsy. However, I discover a pile of unanswered emails, start to get agitated, and then decide to try again to get to sleep.

4:01 a.m.: In my effort to get back into bed without disturbing my quietly-snoring husband, I bang my shin on the bookcase and nearly trip over the sweatshirt I forgot to pick up last night. Now I'm wide awake, in pain, and really annoyed with myself - why can't I sleep? Why did we put the bookcase right next to the door where people could bang into it?

4:05 a.m.: Deep, cleansing breaths . . . I relax one body part at a time, starting with my toes, which feel heavy and sink into the bed, then my feet, except the covers are all twisted, let it go, okay, where was I?, oh, right, now my knees are relaxed, except I know that bruise on my shin will be bad tomorrow, forget it, go back to relaxation, think waves of soft blue light, crap, why can't I do this? Millions of idiots manage to meditate and calm themselves and get back to sleep, I'm such a loser!

4:19 a.m.: Get up and go read in the closet, where I can turn a light on without disturbing my sleeping husband, feeling like a total martyr because I'm not reading in my nice warm bed, but he's got to get up for work early in the morning and he has a long day, and besides, reading in bed probably won't help me fall back asleep anyhow. Wow, I had no idea there were so many dust bunnies on this closet floor!

4:32 a.m.: My back feels funky, maybe it's from sitting on the floor, but it reminds me to make that list of all the things I should talk to the doctor about at my upcoming checkup, all 3 minutes of it, but maybe she'll figure out that my insomnia is caused by something treatable and exotic, I'm not just neurotic. I wonder if she'll send me to one of those cool sleep clinics?, only I doubt I could fall asleep with a bunch of electrodes taped to me and people watching me, that sounds so weird.

5:02 a.m.: Okay, now it's a semi-reasonable hour, I can definitely get up and start the coffee. The paper won't be here yet, but I can catch up on some of those piled-up emails. Geez, how did I get so behind? And OH, I wish my friends would stop sending those chain-letter emails where if I don't forward the cute message to five special women in the next five minutes, I'll break the sisterhood circle of support.

5:57 a.m.: How weird, the alarm is going to go off in about 3 minutes, and NOW I feel like going back to sleep! I'm going to be a wreck all day . . . but at least I caught up on emails. And the paper's here!