Mr. Sandman? Bring me a dream...and preferably not a nightmare

I suffer, to the best of my ability to give it a name, something I like to call seasonal-can't-sleep-for-nothing syndrome. It's happened every year at the beginning of spring and again just as summer is making its way into fall since I was about 19 years old. Now that I think about it, I don't believe I was afflicted during that time I lived in AZ. Hmm.

I don't know what causes it. The only thing I do know is that it can be maddening. I lie there in bed listening to the night noises, which loosely translates into everyone snoring except for me. Even the new puppy snores. (That's an entire post of its own, so I'll save the puppy chronicles for another rant.)

Even more maddening are the thoughts that tromp around in my grey matter before I finally drift off. It's the perfect time to worry and fixate over the economy, my unemployment, my son graduating high school in May, being 40 (yet another entry for later), and trying to figure out the last name of the girl Connie in middle school who started out with one name, but was adopted by her step-dad, and then she moved away. Oh, and yeah, she was in my group in choir and we did a commercial for peanut butter as our project, and man oh man, what was her last name and whatever happened to her? And don't I have a middle school yearbook around here somewhere? Maybe I should look for that tomorrow and sneak a peek to solve that mystery. But where would it be? It might be in the trunk in the closet. I should really clean that closet. Oh, but there's so many other things I should be doing. I'm so behind on everything. And, man, this economy and recession are scaring me, and the cost of groceries are going up, and wow, so is everything else. Stupid Ethanol driving up costs for farmers to feed their livestock, so even milk is more expensive. And what is her last name?

Is it any wonder I can't sleep?

So, sometimes, I sing in my head. Everyone can be thankful for this because I couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle and was somehow affixed to my body with velcro and bungee straps. I don't know how some of these tunes get in my head, but I suspect it came about when I thought about the trunk and its contents.

Last night, it was this song.




Go ahead and listen and watch. You'll be glad you did. Really.

Okay, not so glad are you?

I didn't know that Ray Stevens sang "Along Came Jones" until I googled it this morning. I expect I heard it by "The Coasters" on one of those compilation albums that I loved so much as a child. Growing up, I had a special fondness for silly songs that told stories.

"And then he grabbed her...and then....he tied her up...and then...a train started coming...and then and then...along came Jones...." It didn't matter what else I tried thinking about, these lyrics kept cropping back up into my head.

One might think I'd dream about being tied to the railroad tracks, but I didn't. Nope. I dreamed that a girl I was friends with in high school was perming my hair. She got bored and decided to stop, leaving me with half a head of perm rollers. I started rolling myself only to discover my hair was dreadlocks and I couldn't roll it around those tiny rods.

Today, I'll shuffle through the day, hoping for some decent sleep tonight...and I just might try to solve the mystery of the girl named Connie between yawns and the undying desire to nap.