Merry Christmas, Can I Go To Sleep Now?

Time check: yes, it's approximately 4am on Christmas morning. And I'm sitting here in the darkened living room listening to the electronic equipment whirring in the absolute dead quietness that only comes at approximately 4am in the morning (Christmas or no). Am I awake because my eager, pink-cheeked child was so excited to see what Santa Claus brought that he couldn't remain in his bed for one more minute? Nope. True, he got up around 3am, but that was only because he had to pee, and after waking me up to turn on the bathroom light for him (we'd inadvertently left it off, oh horrors), he went right back to the blissful abandonment of sleep. He was already snoozing as I kissed his cheek and shut the bedroom door. Unfortunately, Mama couldn't achieve sleep again quite so easily. I tossed and turned for about 45 minutes, completely unable to get even close to stumbling, let alone falling asleep, and then gave up on the wishful thinking and came out here to the living room and the familiar comfort of the laptop.

Sigh. I really. Really. Hate. Insomnia. It's another one of those "adult onset" health issues that have been popping up more and more in my life (along with asthma, allergies, and migraines. Good God, what's next--high cholesterol? Don't answer that.) And it seems to be getting worse, i.e. more frequent these days--another one of the delightful side effects of the pregnancy hormone cocktail, I suppose. Ugh. This is ridiculous. Did I mention that, due to a delightful Christmas Eve with houseguests, I didn't even go to bed until around 12:30pm? So I've maybe had 2.5 hours of sleep so far tonight. If this crazy awakeness ever lets me go, I anticipate maybe getting in another 2 or 3 hours max before it *is* time to get up with my eager, pink-cheeked kid to see what Santa brought him. And I won't even be able to make this sleep deficit up later in the day with a nap, like I did yesterday, because we've got to head out to Gilroy for the family Christmas dinner by around noon, and I'll be on duty wrangling the kid and being cute, pregnant, mostly invisible wife while Josh does the family schmooze and catch-up. And when we get home we'll have friends here waiting for us to hang out for the traditional Christmas Decompression night, so no early bedtime either. Gah. I have a feeling tomorrow my "Christmas indulgence" is going to be coffee, lots and lots of coffee. (Well, more than my miserly one-cup limit, anyway.) Woo. Hold me back.

I suppose I could be a good little insomaniacal Christmas elf and go clean up the kitchen or finish knotting the last throw or start writing our holiday newsletter or process some digipix....hell, I could even use this nice quiet space as an opportunity to get some writing done (ahahahaha). But I'm not exactly feeling active or alert enough to actually be effective at anything--I just can't sleep. This sucks. Bah humbug. Oh yeah, and it turned out I am some sort of faintly feverishly sick too--I've been running a low temp since Wednesday eve, just enough to make me achy and slow, but not enough to let me actually, oh, I don't know, SLEEP. At least Tylenol seems to be mostly keeping it at bay, enough so that I could do the whole family Christmas Eve dinner thing last night.

Ok, rounding the corner of 4:45am, and still not sleepy, although my eyes are starting to burn from looking at the screen. Guess I'll go watch TV or something and hope that the idiot box really does have a soporific effect.