The Middle of The Night

I'm up and it's the middle of the night. I've been fairly busy the last several days and so haven't had time to play with my blog or do laundry, so here I am doing both.

One of the hardest things for me when The Marine is gone is sleeping. Noises suddenly take on a new meaning, hence sleeping with a bat. I seem to have a lot of posts about not sleeping or posts written when I should be sleeping.

I don't like the MIDDLE of the night. Early on is fine, and the wee hours right before the alarm goes off you know it's almost over. The middle is the middle. I don't like it.

A black expanse of nothingness stretching on either side of me.

The hump, the black hole. The bend in the night that won't seem to end. The minutes crawl by in the middle.

And the middle of the night makes any deployment or separation seem that much longer, or harder, or more miserable.

It makes anxieties that more angst-y.

It really drives me nuts. I almost want to go wake some recruits up, except they all have school and I don't need grumpy recruits. That's one of the few things I dread more than the middle of the night; grumpy recruits at 0600.

The noise of the dryer is keeping me company. I've already checked on all the recruits, made sure they were breathing and covered, and peered out all the windows, TWICE.

The little red dog "woke" me not long ago and I just gave up and got out of bed. Besides I had to look out the windows. I can't do that from bed.

I've already told him twice to hold it! NO WAY am I opening the doors to let him out. He usually sleeps up in the big room with the girls and the door is shut so I KNOW he can hold it.

We had a surprise visit over Valentine's weekend from The Marine, so I'm sort of back to square one with getting used to the MIDDLE of the night with out him again. It was a great weekend and I was sad to see him leave today. And of course I'm even sadder to be awake. Right now. In the middle.

It probably doesn't help I'm out of Ambien. At least then I am unaware of the middle of the night. And I apparently am quite entertaining about thirty minutes after taking it. So the kids don't get to ask me random questions and I don't sleep. Giving up dark secrets from my past is totally worth not having to deal with the middle of the night. Besides I apparently don't make a lot of sense anyway.

The little red dog is finally sleeping again under my feet. I guess he gave up and decided I was telling him the truth when I said "forget the outdoors tiny".

I'm going to go wander around some more and look at sleeping children. It's 0200, the middle ends around 0345 by my calculations... Not much more to go.