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.

My December...So Far

So I haven't blogged in a while. Shame on me. This is not because I have nothing to blog about. I have all sorts of things to blog about. But nothing that actually takes enough words to equal a legitimate post.
Okay, I do have stuff that could be that long. But I'd have to tyyype iiittt. Which I like to do. I just haven't had the time.

It's that time-consuming time of year. Chriiiiiistmaaaaas!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Christmas began. My employer recruited a fellow dance assistant of mine to decorate the dance studio while she was out of town. The fellow assistant, Jen, didn't sound too thrilled about it, so I offered to help. We picked up some Mickey D's and had a picnic at the studio. Heeheehee. We blasted Christmas music of various kinds, both good and bad. We hung garlands a million different ways, and went on an epic nail hunt. We found the nails in a band-aid box. Yes. a band-aid box. They're safe there.
Evan was there too, so we had him hammer all the nails. We supervised.
I arranged a tribe of nutcrackers and tied sparkly ribbons around fake presents, getting pink glitter EVERYWHERE. I probably still have some in my hair.

The next day, my family decorated our Christmas tree. Dad tried to play various weird Christmas music that was not smiled upon by the rest of the family, so Mom brought in Celtic Christmas, which no one can argue with.
And guess what? I TAKED PEEKTURES!

WE NEED MORE COWBELL!

Hey. There it is. Sweet.

 Here, I found that Snoopy had lost the upper half of his body at some point during the year. It was disturbing, to say the least.

But he got better.

Blitzen vibrating with Christmas joy!!

This is what Christmas Wonder looks like.

Ooh lala. I hope Mrs. Claus wasn't looking.

So yeah. That's all the festivity that's gone on so far. I'm sure there will be more.

Today, something totally unrelated to Christmas yet still related to this blog post, because this post is about December and not just Christmas and this is a run-on sentence, happened.

I had my first driving lesson. My dad took me out to a little loop of road where there was supposed to be a housing development, but isn't and let me get a feel for the truck. The loop is three sides random narrow pavement, and one side actual road that no one ever actually drives on. The truck is an F150 with weird brakes. They squeak.
So I drove around the circle. A lot.
Our driving conversations often went like this:
Dad: "Brake. BRAKE. Are you braking?"
Me:"Yeah. A  little. Calm down."
Dad: "You're going to hit that pole."
Me: "We did not hit the pole. We went over the curb a little, but everyone does that from time to time, so I'm not worried."

Me: "Stupid brakes. This is why I never use brakes in the racing games I play."
Dad: "Never?"
Me: "Never. I let go of the gas periodically. It worked. I'd always win the free game. Until I stopped playing the game and got bad at it."
Dad: "How'd you get bad at it?"
Me: "We stopped eating at Fuddrucker's, where the game was."

Driving is so weird.

I used the turn signals whenever I was about to turn onto the actual road, in case any actual cars came along. Once one did. I pulled over and let it pass.
I kinda went over the curbs sometimes. The turns in the loop were fairly tight. Dad kept freaking out and thinking I was going to hit a random pole, but I never did. I came pretty close once. Eeeheheheheheheheee.
So yeah, I survived. I think the rest of Dad's hair fell out, but he survived too.
And now he doesn't need a haircut ever again. WIN/WIN.

Stuff At My Grandparents House: Zombie Big Bird

My family has established the routine of driving the whole eight blocks to my grandparents house every Friday night for dinner.
When we teens/ young adults were little kids, our grandparents had to have toys around to keep us entertained.
Most of those toys are still there. You never know when they will come in handy.
One of these toys was recently unearthed by my youngest sister, who was bored. Clearly those old toys are still needed to entertain us.

This toy was an old and scary-looking Big Bird.

See how scary he is? When my sister first brought him back out, he had masking tape over his eyes and around his beak. Some horrible catastrophe must have occurred many years ago, that required us to restrain him and bury him deep within the bowels of the back room. Something so awful none of us remember it.
I DO remember parents and grandparents chasing us around with this thing. Back then, we were young and innocent, and did not see him for the horrible monster he truly is.

How we could have been so blind, I will never know. We passed him around, and were told the history of how we came to own such a monstrosity. Many many years ago, when we, the youngest generation, were babies, a friend of my mom's picked it up at a yard sale. I really, really hope that ol' Big Bird was better looking in his younger days, for who would willingly purchase such a freakish thing, bargain or not? I do not question the taste of my mom's friend, as she got me a lovely card for graduation. If Big Bird was this horrible looking back when she brought him to us, I imagine he just followed her away from the sale, and back to our home. (Oh, jeez. Clearly I've been hanging around Evan {of Tales of Harumph } too much. His style is starting to creep into my blog. I think he's trying to assimilate me or something... I'll try to say "freakin'" more often. Sorry.)
I don't know.
It's freakin' scary to think about. (There.)

We passed the Big Ugly Bird around the room, laughing at him and hanging him by his broken pull string (Lord only knows what hellish sounds he made before that thing broke). If we had known what would happen next, we totally would have chucked that Big Bird out into the street and hoped he had been distracted by some tasty-looking neighbor kids, and would never be seen or heard from again.

After enough rude comments and a lot of laughter (Maybe even a few hysterical tears) Big Bird snapped.

My Grandpa's nose will never be the same.

Of course, as soon as we all realized Grandpa was in fact being attacked, and not just goofing around with random objects as he is known to do (a lot) we all leaped up to rescue him and his nose.
My brother restrained Big Bird for a short time.But as you can see from the next picture, my brother isn't the most reliable-looking psychotic bird restrainer ever....

Clearly my mom and my sister (Not the one who unearthed Big Bird in the first place though. This is my younger sister who looks older than me. My youngest sister is the one who brought this all upon us) are still very distraught over the whole situation.

After a while of talking about other things, we realize my brother is no longer holding Big Bird.

WHERE DID HE GO???
Oh. My. Freaking. GOSH.

.....I think I found him. This giant freakish cross between a canary and emu ain't gettin' the best of ME. HELL NO.

Never mind. He got away. I'm sort of thinking maybe his escape and probable ensuing zombie rampage had something to do with this sticker  we came across downtown...

....Ya think?

(Stuff At My Grandparents House may become a somewhat regular installment, mostly of weird pictures in magazines and catalogs. You never know. I already have another one, of a fairly disturbing advertisement. But if it doesn't...well, you all lived without it BEFORE. You'll get over it.)

iSew

Companies that make ballet shoes generally do not sew the straps on.
You get to do it. All by your lonesome.
I will attempt to sew the straps onto my ballet shoes. Two straps per shoe, criss-crossed like an X.

I will also give you people the play-by-play (Or stitch-by-stitch).

First I lock the cats out, because cats think needles and thread are delicious. Blitzen (Previously know as Baby/Itteh Bitteh Kitteh) hates this. He neeeds meee. He neeeeds his roooom. It's safe in there.

I have located a sewing needle. It his hiding in a pincushion, amongst the pins.
I think the eye needs to be much, much bigger.
I have successfully threaded the needle. Third time's the charm. The thread does not match the shoe. It is hot pink. This way, I can tell it's my shoe. :D

Ow. Sorta stabbed myself. Am I the only one here who can stab themselves the the supposedly "not-sharp" end of the sewing needle?? Fortunately, I did not break the skin. Otherwise, I would probably faint. I did last time I sewed stuff. Stabbed myself and promptly fainted.
This would be so, so much easier if sewing didn't scare me. My hands get all scared and sweaty. And they get the shivers. Nope, I don't have a fear of needles. I have sheer terror of needles.

Small stitches? All close together? Who does THAT?  No. Not me. I don't even TRY to go in a straight line. The stitches are everywhere.
It's artistic.

Oops. Sewed the strap a little too far back. But you know what? I DON'T CARE THAT MUCH.
Symmetry is overrated.

There's leather. IN THE BINDING. THERE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LEATHER THERE, DAMMIT.
AHA. I have found the magical very very narrow place between the leather and the elastic. YAY ME, I WIN.

Can I get maybe...ten thimbles? kthx.
One hour. One strap sewed on. OUT. OF. FOUR. The rest should go faster though. Took me FOREVER to figure out where to sew it.
I will probably do the other shoe tomorrow...

Stabbed myself again. Not on the needle. Not on a pin. On the basket all the sewing stuff is kept in.

I finally got the straps sewed on to one shoe. YAY ME. Then it was time for class, So I went to class with one strapless shoe.
Ooh. Strapless. How sexy of me.

LOOKIT. I haz skillz. Okay, not quite. But close enough. Yes, I am white. As a sheet. But not MY sheets. My sheets are purple. See them purple?

 LOOK, NEAT LITTLE STITCHES! Oh, wait....nope. Those are ARTISTIC stitches.

Tomorrow...I attempt shoe number two.
 Which will hopefully be easier, since I have already done one, and did not die. Now I know sort of where and kind of how to sew it.
I will probably not be any more coordinated though. I am actually unnaturally uncoordinated (For me) for about half an hour after I finish.
Yes, I know. I'm weird.