My Brain on Not Sleeping

Last night I woke up at 2:03 AM with a tummyache and could not go back to sleep. The first thing I do, sleepless, is the math to calculate how many zzzzzzzzs I have left if I Go Back To Sleep Immediately and have to get up at 5:45 AM. It never feels like enough. And then I start getting stressed out about how I Need My Sleep. And then I AM NOT SLEEPING and the minutes and hours between O'Dark Thirty and Time To Wake Up become fewer and my brain races more and I start thinking about Inadequacies and Guilt and To Do Lists and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

But after allowing my brain to do its normal Hamster Wheel rotations, I remembered that my sister had assigned me a Mental Task that would distract me from feeling like a hopeless, sleepless loser. In an email last week, she asked me to write some limericks (she never told me what for, but since she sent the request from her work account, I suspect they're for some Intra-Office Limerick Competition).

Pertinent background info: I have been tasked by various family members to write limericks on occasion. It's not a talent I generally remember I have or advertise, but relatives seem to come to me when they need a limerick written (versus when they seek legal advice, for example).

And this is how I happened to mentally "write" two limericks in the wee Monday hours and then fall unwittingly back to sleep. And remembered the poems well enough when I woke to triumphantly send them off to my sister.

I share these not because they're Fantastic Limericks. But because it would be Lame to tell a story about limericks and then not include them.

Each limerick had to include (a rather random) pair of words.

1. Coal/Cold

John's house was too cold I have learned
For some wood or a furnace he yearned
But Santa was wise,
Gave him coal--a surprise!
He was warm while that little lump burned

2. Larry/bill

In compliance old Larry could tell
if a bank was soon going to hell
He'd study each ill
And write a big bill
Not long after, that bank, it would sell.