Terrible Things I'm Willing to Do in Order to be in Bed Right this Second

I don’t stay up late. Even in college I went to bed around 11 PM most nights. The summer that I met my husband I stayed up until 2 AM pretty often. Then we got married and he gave me mono and I’ve never stayed up that late since. I get eight hours of sleep; now that I’m pregnant I get nine or more. I make time for it, I turn down invitations for it, I will fight you for it.

Sometimes circumstance outside my control dictate that I can only have six or seven hours of sleep. This is unacceptable. As it grows later and later my desperation to get into bed grows fiercer. So with that in mind I’ve created the Terrible Things I'm Willing to Do in Order to be in Bed Right This Second chart. Note that doing these terrible things generally won’t get me into bed any faster, this is only to measure my desperation.

I should’ve put in an extra data point for ‘sell state secrets,’ but I couldn’t figure out whether to put that before or after the cage fight.

Sweet dreams friends.

Impostor Syndrome

I’m pregnant. I’ve made it all the way to my second trimester and I have the ultrasound to prove it. Yet I have this nagging sensation that I’m making the whole thing up for attention. Allow me to explain.

Remember when you were a kid and you had to act incredibly sick just to get to stay home from school? It wasn’t enough to simply be sick. You had to put a real show on for your parents so they’d feel sorry for you. For me that meant groaning, forcing an entire glass of pee-colored powdered gatorade down my throat, and lying around the house pathetically until Mom realized that I really wasn’t going to put on pants this morning.

This is a hateful substance.

Fast forward fifteen years and I still put on a show even when no one is watching. If catch myself acting healthy on a sick say then I immediately sit down and cough a bit. Let me repeat that no one is watching; I do this when I’m completely alone in the house. This playacting is entirely for my own benefit. I have two selves: the ten year year old trying to get a lazy day and the suspicious mother searching for signs of faking it.

So imagine how I felt during the first trimester of my pregnancy. I was constantly ill. I’d get back from work and collapse on the couch from sheer exhaustion. The tricky thing about exhaustion is that as soon as my kind husband would volunteer to make dinner I’d feel immediately better. Suspicious? I think so.

Then there’s the fact that sometimes I manage to get off of the recliner all by myself and sometimes I sit listlessly waiting for help because I’m to lazy to even open my mouth and ask for a hand. Sometimes I cook dinner. Sometimes I walk into the kitchen and immediately sit down on the floor because I’m dizzy. When I’m out with friends I can stay awake and coherent until 10 PM. When I’m at home I lose my logic and self-control sometime around 8:30.

I just want to be consistent. If someone pointed a gun at me and said “go pick up your library books” I could certainly manage it. So really the problem isn’t one of ability so much as motivation. Maybe that should be my new motto “Live every day as if someone will shoot you unless you fulfill your responsibilities.” It’s a little wordy, and not terribly inspirational, but it’s perfect for fakers like me.

Wipe the Teardrops Off Your Stupid Guitar

I have nothing against Taylor Swift, I want that clear from the outset. I’m not a country music person myself, but I respect the genre. My grudge is against Teardrops on my Guitar. It’s storytime now.

It was the summer of my sophomore year. Since I was the first girl to arrive at the apartment I had my pick of empty bedrooms. I’d just finished unpacked my three boxes and two trash bags full of stuff when another girl arrived. Her name was something like Br/i/ee/-ann/ona/ony. She brought twelve boxes.

I stopped to chat and since she seemed normal enough I invited her to share the room with me. We didn’t seem to have much in common but  I’ll always take the adequate option over the blind risk. I left for several and returned to an apartment with five total strangers all setting into their new space.

I don’t remember much about the other girls, what I do remember was the state of my bedroom when I returned. Bri’s side of the room overflowed with cutesy decorations, inspirational quotes, and more cardigans than a single closet could hold. This girl was barely eighteen and already she carried the complete trappings of a soccer mom.*

I think this is what she was going for, only cluttered.

My decorating philosophy at the time was aggressively spartan, but I told myself that it was her side of the room and she was entitled to do whatever she liked with it.  Then I saw the shrine.

“Do you like them?” She asked. “I saved all the flowers Brent** ever gave me.”

The brittle flowers hung upside down along the top of her wall like a banner of white, pink, lilac, and yellow.  Clustered over her desk hung a bouquet of desiccated red blooms and a broad picture display of a young man with square jaw.

Imagine more flowers. Also, Brent looks nothing like the charismatic Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan.

“That’s a lot of flowers,” I kept my voice neutral.

She quickly explained, “Of course, Brent and I aren’t dating anymore, I tested out of high school a year early and we both agreed that it was best to make a clean break.”

“Mmm,” I nodded my head noncommittally.

I’d never seen Fatal Attraction, but I knew that displaying pictures of an ex was the first  step on a slippery slope of obsession, stalking, and ultimately murder. I was already preparing my statement for the police. “Yes officer, I knew her. No, we weren’t close. Well yes, she was a little odd, but I never suspected her of anything like this.”

Bri interrupted my mental interrogation scene with, “Hey, do you like Taylor Swift?”

I shrugged, Bri must’ve taken as encouragement because she turned the volume up on her speakers and more of the country-pop streamed into the room.  Forever I will associate Taylor Swift with dead roses.

It was like that every day. Taylor Swift, Brent, and precious little else to talk about. The creep factor went down when I realized that Bri and Brent weren’t really broken up. She still went with him to his Senior prom. They still made out on the couch. They still texted at 1 AM.

(ring)

Me:Ugggh

Bri: It’s ok Laura, go to sleep.

(she texts Brent back. Seconds later her phone rings again.)

Bri: I can’t believe he’s still texting me, it’s not like we’re a couple anymore.

Me: Turn it on vibrate.

Bri: Shhh, Laura, don’t wake up.

(The cycle of ringing and texting continues for another half hour before she takes her conversation out of the bedroom)

My favorite bit was the part where she’d complain to me the next morning about Brent’s behavior. Some days she would rage about the way he just couldn’t get over their “break up.” Other days she got teary because he hadn’t contacted her for days. Both events produced the same results: Bri lying on her bed listening to Taylor Swift sing Teardrops on My Guitar over and over. This lasted all summer.

Lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling never looks this good in real life.

During her marathon break up I too dumped my boyfriend. For the last year and a half of our two year relationship I’d toyed with the idea of ending things. Every time I discussed a separation he got queasy and occasionally threw up. So I stayed with him because it was comfortable, because he was a nice guy, and because I couldn’t stand the sight of him crying and vomiting. But things had reached a breaking point, soon he would go on a two year religious mission and if I didn’t dump him now I’d be stuck writing him letters that whole time.

So when he dropped me off after a romantic dinner of $1 microwave pizzas I decided that it was time.  I stood inside the door, he stood outside. He leaned forward for a goodnight kiss and I stepped back.

You think you're getting a good deal. Instead you get indigestion.

“I’m breaking up with you. I don’t want to talk about it. Please don’t contact me for a month.” I said it all in one breath and closed the door.

This sounds cold, and it was. My only excuse is that he and I had already been over all the reasons why I thought we should end it and why he thought we should stay together. There was nothing left to say. Mostly I wanted to close that door before the gastrointestinal upheaval began.

I took the next day off from work because I thought I might get upset or emotional. Around 10AM I discovered that I was really fine so I read a book. I missed having someone to kiss, but I was excited at all the new possibilities suddenly available. I called him that evening to make sure that he was ok and I made an effort not to talk about him afterwards. In other words I wiped the teardrops off my stupid guitar and moved on with my dang life.

Colonel Huffington

It started on a lovely autumn walk last year. Shane and I were holding hands, marveling at the changing leaves, gazing lovingly into one another’s eyes--you get the picture. Such moments usually last about 2.8 seconds before one of us (mostly me) gets bored and kills the romance.

This time it was Shane. He poked me in the belly, I threatened his life, he challenged “What are you gonna do about it, huh?” Typical stuff.

Then it happened. A lifetime of classic BBC dramas bubbled to the surface, mixed with my recent Moby Dick audiobook, and coalesced into the voice of Colonel Huffington.

“I’ll have you court martialed,” I roared in the voice of a middle-aged British naval officer. You can replicate his accent by filling your mouth with marshmallows and then aggressively disapproving of young people and their slipshod work aboard this vessel.

A visual approximation of Colonel Huffington. I want you to imagine a feathered three cornered hat in this picture.

Shane found it funny the first time, less so when the evening wore on and I was still an officer in her majesty’s navy.

“Hey Laura, are you going to bed soon?”

“Preposterous! Did Nelson rest at the battle of Trafalgar? I think not young man.” Colonel Huffington is a veteran of the Napoleonic wars.

“Hey Laura, did you remember to pack a lunch for tomorrow?”

“My manservant Reginald will attend to it. I have far more important affairs to concern myself with.”

“Does that mean you’ll do it in the morning?”

*pause* “Yeah, I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

It was a sickness, I couldn’t stop. Colonel Huffington appeared about three times a week and constantly threatened my husband with a court martial. Whenever I didn’t know what to say to Shane I turned to this blustering old man for help. He could bully himself out of any situation by refusing to listen to reason and citing his personal experience in the war. No one can disagree with a decorated old veteran who wears his rank like a poncho during a food fight--nothing sticks to him.

When Shane wanted me to buy strawberry instead of cookies and cream ice cream, Colonel Huffington declared strawberry treasonous to the crown. When Shane discovered that I didn’t know the difference between a route and a highway, Colonel Huffington accused Shane of questioning the navigational abilities of a superior officer. When Shane caught me screwing up his birthdate on my passport application, Colonel Huffington informed him that there are no birthdays in her majesty’s navy--we simply do not have time for that sort of personal indulgence.

Court martialed. Court martialed. Court martialed.

Only now that Colonel Huffington has faded from my life do I understand why I loved being him so much. Colonel Huffington cares not for your opinion. I care. I constantly care about every little opinion.

My biggest pet peeve is when someone dismisses an idea without considering it. If I call them on it they’ll say “Well, I know I’m right.”

How? How do you know? Did an angel descend from heaven, give you the lowdown on the current political situation, tell you that you’re a swell guy, and then fly back up? Even if one did come down and fill you in on proper facebook etiquette you should still have some questions. Was that really an angel? Should I get my medication adjusted? Why was I chosen to lead the world into this new age of absolute truth?

Because this annoys me so much I try to be on the opposite end of the spectrum. I constantly question my own opinions. I get lost trying to follow the twists and turns of other people’s points of view. I find myself entertaining absurd thoughts such as Maybe women don’t need to be paid the same wage for the same work.  Or Shame is a totally legitimate motivational tool, so it’s ok to ridicule the obese. Sometimes even Perhaps we should close down shelters so that the homeless will try harder to get jobs.

Like I said, I try to give other people’s opinions a fair shake; even the opinions I read on the internet. It’s mentally exhausting.

Colonel Huffington has the ability to make snap judgements and defend them against the onslaught of logic, consideration, and common sense. I adore the sense of power that come from being him. I can transform and completely ignore my urge to understand other people. I’m right even when I’m wrong and I love it.

But it’s just for fun, and nothing bigger than ice cream is at stake. Some people live like Colonel Huffington every day. They breeze through life with the sure sense that they’re always right. They wear thick armor of smug correctness while sparring with us unarmed let’s-consider-your-point-of-view  opponents. We don’t stand a chance against them, we can’t land a blow, we can only get skewered by their certainty.

It’s ungentlemanly behavior. We would never tolerate this sort of bad form in her majesty's navy. I say we have them all court martialed.