I had been working on a post that I was going to publish today about how great I feel thanks to my devotion to the Sleep More to Lose Weight plan. I was going to tell you about how Saturday I forgot to drink my morning coffee (and then remained productive despite the wicked headache that resulted), and then how on Sunday I stayed wide awake during the church budget meeting.

I felt like I was well on my way to conquering the world.

Then, last night, I was about as wide awake as I’ve ever been. At two o’clock in the morning. Which is late even by my standards. So rather than celebrating the new, more alert me, I’m just hoping I can make it through the day without collapsing.

And while I’ve known for years that I march to the beat of a different drummer, I’ve concluded that my circadian rhythm is better set to the daylight hours of the planet Mercury.

Speaking of crashing down again, I’ve got the blog fixed for now, but I’m just one backslash of code away from the whole thing falling apart. So, if you show up and everything’s wonky, you’ll know why.

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Those of you who know me know that I don’t like to sleep. I blame my older sisters for this. My two oldest sisters were teenagers during my toddler and preschool years, and my memories of when they lived at home involve being put to bed early while everyone else sat up and laughed and popped popcorn.

I’m sure those memories are totally correct because I have never been known to exaggerate.

Dorm life nearly did me in, because there is always someone up doing something fun in a college dorm. If you’re the type of person who never wants to miss anything, you might not sleep for years.

Anyway, I hate sleep. It takes up so much time that I could spend doing something more interesting.

The ladies at Mason-Dixon Knitting, however, are trying a little experiment where they sleep 7 & 1/2 hours each night. It’s supposed to make you ever so much healthier.

I know all this. I took classes in college where they talked about sleep hygiene and insomnia and the diurnal cortisol cycle and all that jazz. But late at night is the only time my house is quiet. If I go to sleep, POOF!, it will be morning and people will be up asking me for food.

For the introvert, time alone trumps good health.

But this article in Glamour made me reconsider my night-owl ways: Lose Weight While You Sleep. One woman in this article lost FIFTEEN POUNDS just by sleeping more.

So last week, I committed to getting myself to bed by 11 PM each night. This is hard work, people. Just for a change of pace, I’m thinking about learning to defuse bombs so I can do something less nerve-racking that doesn’t require so much prior planning.

I’ll let you know how it goes if I’m ever successful.

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Although it goes against everything I believe about the Bible and God and who runs the universe, there have been times in my life when I have been superstitious. It tends to rear its ugly head during baseball games, which is ironic since Theodore and I are such fair-weather fans that we didn’t realize that the World Series had started until we turned the TV on last night. And even at that I’d have to sit and think really hard to come up with who’s playing.

When the Cardinals won the World Series, I developed a sort of reverse superstition. For example, if I’m knitting on something and the Cardinals are winning, I hesitate to put down whatever it is I’m knitting on, for fear that it’s my knitting that’s influencing the game, and not, you know, the players on the field.

That looks so ridiculous when I type it out, but it sounds completely sane in the heat of the moment.

But as I was saying, I got to the place where if I was afraid to put my knitting project down, I would definitely put it down because I felt that doing the opposite of my initial impulse was better. Which is just another way of saying that what I do has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on anything happening on the field.

I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.

Friday and Saturday, I have a completely empty calendar. Completely. Nowhere to go. No meetings. No soccer games. No music lessons. We have our usual church stuff on Sunday, then a free day on Monday again. I have had a scattered free day here and there, but this is the first time since August that my calendar has been so empty. My calendar was empty yesterday (except for church in the evening), but I spent most of it working on something that should have been done weeks ago, which kind of sucks the joy out of it all.

But tomorrow? Nothing. Empty.

And you know what? I’ve been afraid to tell the blog world about it. I was afraid that if I wrote it down, my free days would suddenly disappear. Superstition.

Then I remembered my reverse superstition philosophy. Since I felt like I shouldn’t say anything, that means I should definitely say something. Superstition again.

The truth is, God is in control. Things will either come up tomorrow, or they won’t.

How’s that for a deep thought?

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If you want to hear something disconcerting, click on the link, scroll down to where it says “Barn Owl Voice,” and play it.

Don’t, however, play this if you have sleeping children in the house or live in an apartment with thin walls.

Barn Owl Voice.

Now, imagine that you don’t have any idea what that sound is and that you are unloading groceries from your car. Imagine that it is pitch black because the streetlight is burned out (the streetlight for which you are charged every month, because it sits twelve inches too far off the road to be the city’s responsibility — not that you’re bitter or anything). And I am certainly not kidding when I say “pitch black.”

What do you think you would do in such a situation?

It was enough to make me drop the groceries and run into the house for Theodore.

Theodore’s assessment? “It sounds like a murder.” It was very reassuring.

But it did take that worn-out phrase, “screaming bloody murder” and give it some legs. Or at least a voice.

So.

Deep down, we knew it wasn’t really someone screaming in pain. I know some frighteningly methodical people, but nobody pauses exactly twenty seconds between screams if they’re being attacked by an ax murderer. Not that I’ve actually heard someone being attacked by an ax murderer. I’ve also not ever been hit over the head with a baseball bat, but I would know it if I had. At least I would know it after I regained consciousness, provided the concussion wasn’t so bad that I had amnesia.

ANYway, knowing it is probably a sound of nature doesn’t quite keep the hair on the back of one’s neck from standing on end.

Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, I now have an extensive knowledge of owls of all stripes. So I now know that Great Horned Owls (which we often hear at night), have been known to eat domesticated dogs as prey. And even though the field behind us is filled with field mice, which no longer get into the house thanks to the black snake that lives under the shed — a trade-off I’m not entirely comfortable with, Digory now gets nightly escorts outside.

Because I never worry needlessly or go overboard. Just ask Theodore.

Or maybe don’t.

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Even no-fun moms like me can have an occasional fun day.

We did school first thing this morning. Then late in the morning we got together with our homeschool co-op for a trip to the apple orchard. They had goats to pet, a hay bale maze, and a corn stalk maze. Then we rode the tractor back to the pumpkin patch to pick out a pumpkin. After the field trip the kids and I went to the park for a picnic.

I don’t know which was more fun: watching J. enjoy it the first time or listening to him tell his daddy about it this evening. We ride tractor, we see goats, we see punkins…

I’m really enjoying our co-op. It’s a really good fit for all of us. Our kids are pretty much the same age, we all have similar philosophies and goals. We’re all laid back so nobody gets irritated if things don’t go as planned, but we’re all conscientious enough that we can rely on each other to follow through on things.

But I do have to say, the best part was the park. We had our lunch by the creek that runs through the park. Creeks here are rock-bottomed, as in sheets of solid rock, not just pebbles. The water was low, so we could sit on the dry slabs and watch the water running over the rocks, making small waterfalls. A. worked on skipping the rocks, and J. just threw the rocks in. E., who is so much her mother’s daughter, fell in. Come to think of it, I can’t think of a time when we’ve been around a body of water that she hasn’t fallen in. The leaves are just starting to fall here, and I loved watching the leaves fall into the water and then float downstream. Sigh.

And, the best part of it for the kids: I had Hostess Cupcakes for dessert. I was a hero.

After eating apples at the orchard, playing outside, going on the hayride, and then the cupcake, J. was grimy. I had to give him a bath, because there was no way I was going to put him in his bed for his nap like that. Then when he woke up, he smelled of baby shampoo. He’s very snuggly when he wakes up from his nap. It was wonderful.

Let’s see. Funny things the kids have said lately.

A., after watching a snippet of a joke on a Friends rerun that went completely over his head: “I don’t know what that meant, but I have a feeling it was funny.

E., the other day at lunch: “I wish I had two mouths, so I could talk and eat at the same time. A. replied: “I wish your mouth had a zipper.”

Life is good.

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