That Night I Did Not Sleep

Okay, so clearly, from my username/URL thingie you all know by now that I am not very good at sleeping. I can do it. It's just hard to GET there.

A few weeks ago, the town in which I live had it's annual Christmas party on the Square. My town tries really hard to be artsy and awesome, and we have all kinds of artsy booths, and parades, and Bethlehem, and dancing, and music, and weird people giving you free cookies and their church's business card, which I didn't entirely know churches had.

It's an event that you would like to be well rested for.
No such luck.
I could tell I wasn't really sleepy, so I took a Tylenol PM a little after I took my regular nightly antihistamine. It didn't really help. I took another an hour later. Don't freak, I'm not overdosing. Full dose is two pills.
By around 3:30 am I was really tired, and not sure why I was still awake.
Okay, one reason was that one of my cats, Bambi Sue, was jumping on me repeatedly and scratching my arm up.
But other than THAT, I should be asleep, right?
I started to go a little crazy around 4:00. I started counting sheep. I don't know why I tried it. That never works for me, because sheep counting always goes like this: One sheep over the fence....you go, sheep. Two sheep. Three. Four. Fivesix. Seven, eight. Two Siamese twin sheep. Pregnant sheep. Farmer Dan. Farmer Dan's wife, Hildegard, churning butter and flying over the fence. Old Blue. Bessie the cow. Twelve sheep. Thirteen sheep. Three geese. Sheriff Gomez. Old Man Jenkins. A potted plant. Fourteen sheep. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Rick Moranis. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.
I was sleepier before I started, wasn't I? Thanks a lot, Rick Moranis. 

At 4:30 I realized that no matter what, I was going to be sleep deprived the next day. I thought I was crazy before. Now this, this was true insanity. I started thinking up all sorts of things to keep myself entertained. I eventually came up with an imaginary sock puppet whom I christened Tim. I put Tim into all kinds of scenes and occupations.

I will attempt to demonstrate one using MS Paint. Which I will open as soon as Internet Explorer stops being retarded in the corner. I haven't used you in like, a year, Internet Explorer. Why did you choose now to spontaneously open?
That is why I do not use you, Internet Explorer.
There. Okay, so here is Tim the Sock Puppet in all his 100% cotton glory:

No, there is no arm inside Tim. Tim is his own man. I thought about drawing an arm though.
And here is my favorite of Tim's various adventures.

I think the saloon babes are checking him out.
He was a bunch of other stuff too. Like a plumber, and a banker, and a chef, and a ninja.

This is why I will never do drugs. I get like this on ANTIHISTAMINE (And a little Tylenol PM). Lord preserve us all if I ever tried actual illegal drugs.
I think the universe would implode.

Anyway.
By about 5:30, I decided I was not going to get up the next morning. I was going to get some sleep, damn it.
I grabbed the notepad on my nightstand, grabbed the nearest writing implement, and staggered to the bathroom to write my family a note. This had to be done in the bathroom because I share a bedroom with my sister, and can't just turn on the lights, or she would probably kill me. Scratch that. She'd try to ask what I was doing, but it would be all mumbly and slurry, and I'd tell her, and she'd roll over and go back to sleep (Which is less frightening than what I would do in the same situation. I'd kill you violently on the spot, then roll over and go back to sleep) . But she might kill me later. I think she might kill me now. She's trying to sleep. It's 1:19 am. I'll finish in the morning. o.o

So it's morning now. Last night, I went to sleep. I dreamed that me and Evan kept sneaking off in the night so we could be together ALL THE TIME. :D And there certainly wasn't any dirty stuff going on, my dreams like to keep a PG rating. We watched movies, and played cards, and then we went to sleep. XD
And Evan's brother appeared to be living in the pantry, which was kind of weird.

Anyway, where I was I? Oh yeah, I was writing a note. The note read, "HEY ALL YOU PEOPLE- Guess what time it is? 5:45am. Guess what I haven't been doing ALL NIGHT? Sleeping. I've tried everything from counting sheep to making stories about a sock puppet named Tim {Clearly this whole Tim thing was a big deal that night} and nothing works. If I'm actually sleeping tomorrow, please don't wake me up. Just go to the parade without me. I'll live."

And they did not wake me up. I finally fell asleep a little after six, and slept until about eleven. The parade was at noon, and I'm so glad I didn't go. Some of the "floats" they had were just trucks. How terribly exciting. Like most parades.  I will watch part of the Rose Parade on TV, and that's enough parade for the year.

Due to the lack of sleep, and the weirdness of the night before, the day of festivities was a strange day indeed. I'd have skipped it altogether if I hadn't been dancing in it. I was strange and mildly loopy most of the day, but started feeling better in the late afternoon. For performance time, adrenaline took over, which was a very nice thing for it to do. That woke me up. Of course, Evan got dragged along to this performance. Okay, not really dragging. He likes it. He probably even likes carrying some of my stuff for me. He's an agreeable sort of dude.
Evan and I wandered around the booths and admired the shiny things. I hadn't bothered to bring regular clothes, so I wandered around in my fluffy red and white tap costume, thus when wiggling through crowds I could say, "Excuse me, excuse mee. I'm little, and cute, and fluffy, excuse me.".  We wandered into Bethlehem, where my little sister's friend, Chloe, was "working". Chloe told us she had gold coins and started digging all up under her robe to find them. She was wearing jeans under her robe, but it was still a little disturbing.

It actually ended up being a really good day. In fact, by the end of the day, I wasn't that tired.
I DID get to fall asleep earlier than usual. Before 2. :O   And I slept all the way through the night. And I woke up a little after 11.
And there appeared to be nobody home, which weirded me out until I found my mom, who told me everyone had gone birthday shopping for my grandma, and they were afraid to wake me up in case I'd had two bad nights in a row. It was fine by me. I'll take all the extra sleep I can get.
And I needed it, after the Night of No Sleep.

That's not even the first time this has happened. But because of Tim, it is the most interesting.