Progress

Last night I fell asleep around 3 AM, which was an hour earlier than I fell asleep the previous night. I'm not sure what's going on; Sunday night's sleep issues were solely due to heat (it was hot!) and the presence of a moth that Loki kept trying to catch by using me as a trampoline to get up to the window above my head. Every time I fell asleep, he'd be jumping on me or using me as a landing pad, and eventually it felt like torture. Finally, Dan got coherent enough to kill the damn moth so Loki lost interest, and I got to sleep an hour later.

But last night, it was not so hot. It was, in fact, quite a pleasant temperature. After my cracked-out day I took a 1.5 hour nap, which was lovely and refreshing and I'm sure contributed to last night's insomnia. I took two valerian root pills at 11:30 PM, which in every other circumstance have flat-out knocked me out, but last night they were no match for The Brain That Would Not Turn Off No Matter What. Until we started with this whole engagement and wedding deal, I'd never had insomnia (other than a bout during a course of prednisone for poison oak back in 1999). Since then, it's become this creepy, shadowy beast that lurks under my pillow and uses some sort of remote control to keep my brain on no matter how desperately I desire it otherwise, and I never know when it will strike. Ideas, concerns, logistics, what-ifs run through my head over and over, back and forth, thumping as if in a potato sack race from one hemisphere to the other. This happens during the day, too, but it's not so overwhelming when I'm interacting with people or watching Planet Earth on DVD or knitting a new baby blanket (this one in small triangles to be sewn together later, and I'm super excited because it's going to look so cool!). Sometimes I also have a song running through my head as background music to the potato sack race. During the day I can direct my thoughts in other directions, but at night, when it's time to sleep, that's when the crazy begins.

And really, I have no idea why this whole WEDDING thing is taking over my brain. We're still over 9 months away and already have a lot of stuff figured out. We registered a domain name last night and Dan's working on our website for wedding-related information, and today I shot some emails to some photographers and friends who have already gotten married in the area to ask their advice about caterers and stuff. We finally put everything down in a great big spreadsheet, budget and guest list and all kinds of lists with formulas, which made me happy because look! I figured out how to make that number do what I wanted it to do. We're collecting addresses and phone numbers and I feel like it's real progress toward a real event, not just these nebulous ideas that have been floating around the ether for the last several months. But with all this progress comes more what-ifs, more logistics, more questions and concerns and ideas, and for some reason my brain is fixating on these things when it should really be sleeping like a good brain. I can't even get into a book to take my mind off things, and that's really saying something, because I am an expert at the time-honored tradition of literary escapism. Like so many other tricks, it has failed me.

There are other things I could be writing about - my favorite show's on now (SYTYCD) and TWOP is recapping it and they've even got a devoted forum for it now so I can read other people fanwank in all sorts of ways. The yard is looking better every day; Dan is running and biking all the time and looking amazingly good; we went dancing last Friday and we're going again this Friday. Thursday we've got a date planned for the drive-in, which has been impossible until we got Moxie. All these things I'm excited about or looking forward to, but am I writing about them? No. I'm writing about Wedding Brain and how I feel like a pod person for thinking so much about this event that really, when you come down to it, is just a party for one day. I'm afraid that if I get too focused on or bogged down with Wedding Details, after the day is over there will be After Christmas Letdown x a googol. I'd rather avoid that, since what I'm really looking forward to is the Being Married part, rather than the Big Party. I just wish I could get that across to the monster under my pillow because brides need their beauty sleep, you know.