I've always been a good sleeper. I might stay up too late, particularly when I'm preoccupied -- the night before I take a trip always seems to be one where I hit the hay at 5am -- but once I'm sound asleep I don't tend to wake. All of a sudden, though, I'm in this totally different place where the slightest stirring has me leaping out of bed, after which I simply cannot go back to sleep. Three times in the past week or so Kim has gotten up for something, then headed back to bed within minutes, but has woken me up in the process. Each time my initial thought was, "It's time to get up," like an alarm clock had just rung. Tonight I had just fallen asleep around 10pm, but was wide awake at 10:15pm when she went into the kitchen and have had no luck convincing my body and mind that it's still bedtime.

The irony is that I'm experiencing the sort of insomnia, if you can call it that, that Kim has always complained of, while she seems to be sleeping more soundly than ever before. It's like we've swapped souls or something. She is unusually calm and grounded these days. I, on the other hand, have slipped my tether and am only managing to stay near it by exerting all my mental energy in a desperate downward push, like that school of fish at the end of Finding Nemo, who are only able to escape the trawler's net by responding in unison to little Nemo's injunction to, "Swim down!" At times I feel like I'm making progress. At times I feel like I'm about to become a fish out of water.

I know, there I go again about fish. But our beta is still floating in a lively death posture and the tank is clouding over with that material that Gregers Werle is intent on removing, even if he deprives his environment of the ecological balance that sustains life in the process. Should I start putting up posters offering a reward for my missing flink hund? Would I be better served realizing that I'm happier playing the role of Hjalmar Ekdal? Do I still have that hammer that Lillian Peña willed me in our final senior-year Spectrum?

Mode: staunend
Muse: Faith (Live in The Sydney Capitol Thetre 08/1981) - The Cure - Faith "Rarities 1980-1981" (Digit