Sleepless in Ann Arbor - Things that make me go, hmm?

If only my brain had one way. (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

I don’t sleep much these days. Actually, I guess it’s been about 14-years since my last good night of sleep.

Back then I could blame my lack of slumber on my newborn daughter. Two years later, my second daughter was the culprit, and then 16-months after that, my son - infants, especially breastfed ones, make a night of uninterrupted, blissful sleep pretty much impossible.

The problem was once they started sleeping through the night, I found that I still couldn’t. Somewhere in those five years my body became programmed to wake up every few hours to unite a crying infant with its mother’s boob, wait for them to tank up, and then return them to their crib.

And that’s where I stand today – minus the baby, boob and crib parts.

I may have the world’s largest diseased prostate gland but I’ll probably never know because even though I routinely wake up and take trips to the pisser in the middle of the night, I’m pretty sure my prostate isn’t to blame. Sometimes a funky dream is the guilty party, but more often than not it’s my maladjusted biological clock combined with an extremely overactive brain.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to shut off my brain.

Ever.

And it’s not like every thought entering my skull that wakes (or keeps) me up at night is even worthwhile. If I stayed awake worrying about financial woes or my health or something like that, it might make sense, but usually I’m thinking about something stupid like: I wonder if everyone sees color the same way? Is my green the same as your green? What if we only both know it to be green because that’s how our brains have been trained? What if my green actually looks like your red?

This is the kind of shit that keeps me up - and when I’m up, my brain really starts a grinding.

I wonder what will keep me up tonight? (Photo by Lon Horwedel)

Here’s a small sample of some random thoughts that were bouncing around my noggin this very morning between 5 and 5:15 when I awakened for no apparent reason.

How can BP pump billions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for the better part of a year and gas prices don’t budge, and even go down, but lately if a camel farts in the Middle East, gas prices shoot up 30 cents a gallon overnight?

Are people just religious because they’re afraid of death? And if so, why isn’t that fear strong enough to make us glorify Jesus with amazing paintings like the kind Caravaggio painted during the Baroque period? That was some good art!

Why is it that spring is the only season that doesn’t already feel like it’s arrived when it finally does? I mean it already feels like summer well before June 21st, and it already pretty much feels like fall by September 21st, and it for sure feels like winter long before December 21st, so why doesn’t it already feel like spring well before March 21st?

If students are smart enough to get into college (say the University of Michigan, for example) why then, aren’t they smart enough to look both ways before walking out into the street? And why is college when most of them start smoking? Certainly they’re smart enough to know that cigarettes aren’t good for them. Not to mention they’re twice as likely to drink themselves to death than any other demographic.

If I had to lose one body part, which one could I do without? What if it were just a finger? A toe? An organ? How about senses? Would I rather be blind, deaf, or dumb? Would I miss it if I couldn’t smell anymore, or would it be a blessing?

Should I get rid of my 3-iron and put another hybrid in my golf bag?

Will I ever get cancer? I wonder if I have it now but don’t know it yet? Do you not have cancer one day, and then the next day you do?

Did the folks who jumped out of the Trade Center even know what was going on at the time? I wonder if they felt a strange sense of calm as they fell to their deaths?

What if I won the lotto and threw away the ticket without ever checking my numbers? If I did win, would I really be happier, or just less broke?

Why does hair appear in so many different places on my body at different times of my life? I had plenty of hair on my head for 20-plus years, and now it’s mostly gone, but I have plenty on my chest and my back, and lately in my ears and my nose. Even my eyebrows are starting to look a little too Thomas Edison these days. My legs, however, are smooth as a baby’s ass when they used to be plenty hairy – what’s up with that?

Is my mother really dead, or is she just playing a cruel joke on all of us? Can she hear what I’m thinking right now, or is she just rotting away in her casket? I wonder how long before she’s nothing but bones?

Why do we equate heaven with the sky and the clouds, and why do we think dead relatives are always favorably looking down on us? What if they’re really disgusted by us and are hoping we don’t die soon because they’re enjoying their time away from us? If there really is a heaven, how far back does it date? I mean could Thomas Jefferson be having a tryst with Anna Nicole Smith right now? (Assuming, of course, they’re both in heaven).

What is so hard about golf that I couldn’t become a professional? I mean it’s really nothing more than getting your body to repeat the same thing over and over again with a great amount of consistency and mental fortitude. Why couldn’t I do it?

I wonder if my kids will ever get married? I wonder if any of them are gay and don’t know it yet? I wonder what they’ll be when they grow up? I wonder if they wonder what they’ll be when they grow up?

Are dreams really just little slices of what it’s like after you die? You know, not always good, but always very interesting. Or do you just fade to a black nothingness and that’s it?

If I took every day of my life when I was sick, or just had a headache, and added them all up, I wonder how many weeks, or months of my life I will have wasted feeling like crap?

When do criminals turn bad? We all start out innocent babies; at what point does someone start down the wrong path? Are some people truly just evil? How can that be?

Do people really die in their sleep, or do they wake up first in a terrified panic alone in the dark? Is drowning truly the most painful way to die? I wonder if you know you’re going to die the second before a fatal car accident? How does anyone know?

Where should I put my son in the batting order this year?

How come some people can play musical instruments so well, and other people really suck?

If the world were made up of nothing but people like me, how many businesses would go bankrupt in less than a month?

Why do dogs like humans so much?

Is anybody really, truly happy?

Why the hell can’t I just shut off my brain and go back to sleep?

Hmm? Now I have one more thing I have to think about ... CRAP!!!