The first one

The first one is because I am not sleeping at 3am. All of everything I have read about not sleeping says that you shouldn't lie in bed trying to sleep, you should do something else. But I never have, I just try to sleep, and try and try for years and years. Sometimes I feel a little bit ridiculous, like I'm pretending I sleep, like I never will sleep, not really, not ever again. Like I'm a little kid pretending I went to bed when I was supposed to, when my mother told me to before she went out for the evening and left me in charge. Like we didn't spend the last hour before she and my dad got back watching every set of headlights that turned off of main street toward our house looking for-- what? The shape? The headlight profile of our parents' car? I don't know, but whatever it was, we knew it. Pretending we hadn't spent the time it took them to drive two and a half country blocks flying through the house, cleaning up at the speed of light, turning off all the lights on all the floors so that what our parents saw as they came up the street must have looked like a brilliant Chinese lantern with four (sorry, baby sister, you weren't born yet in this story) frenetic blurs rocketing about and then the light in one space after another blinking out till the whole lantern was dark and quiet. All of us in our beds, trying to look like sleeping people, sleeping people who just happened to be completely of breath. My mom came in to look at us. Gentle snores to improve the effect. She bent down close and whispered. "Liars." And that's how I feel, sometimes, lying in the dark trying to sleep. Lying. Trying. Lying to sleep.

So I thought I should try something else and see if it works. Try, try, try. I am trying. I am trying harder. I am trying something new. I am trying blogging. I am not trying to sleep.

How sad this glow must look from outside my bedroom. How sad and tiring. Look, the people say to each other as they walk by my window. Look at that poor person blogging and not sleeping. How pitiful. Yes, yes it is. Why are you people walking by my window in the night? You should be home in bed. Some of you would be sleeping, I know people do it, I've seen a lot of that from my husband and two of my children, but some of you could be blogging. Cozy, to blog in bed, the blankets and the laptop keep you warm. Good thing the battery was charged. What it doesn't do, I think, is make you sleepy. Just tired.

I'm trying this. I'm not lying here, I'm really trying.