June 6: The City Never Sleeps. Sometimes I Don't Either.

It's summer in the city. You can tell not only by the concrete that singes the delicate skin on the bottoms of your bare feet, freshly emerged from their cocoon of warm fuzzy socks and winter boots and yet to be roughened by the scrapes and stubbs of the season, but by the dramatic increase in the ambient outdoor noise. Sirens wailing down the street, music blaring out car windows, people hollering and banging, coming and going. Campfires crackling, children laughing, dogs barking. The city never sleeps, especially during the summer months.

As I was thinking about getting dinner ready tonight, incredibly later then I should've been pondering such things, I found myself wanting a fourth cup of coffee. It smelled so good sitting there on the counter, freshly brewed with a dash of cinnamon, and I have been in a fog most of the day today that I just can't seem to shake, no matter how hard I try. I woke up late this morning and have been behind ever since.

I decide on breakfast potatoes and quiche for dinner tonight, only to find that we had three remaining potatoes and less then a dozen eggs. In my foggy and procrastinating state, with no plan B and even less time, I went ahead with the menu anyways. I scramble for things to fatten up the quiche and try to stir the meager helping of potatoes around in the pan with no luck, as they stick to the pan more and more with each scrape of the spatula, forming a crusty, burnt layer of starch on the bottom. And I forgot to grease the bottom of the quiche pan, so that will turn out about the same…

What is wrong with me? I think. I struggle to find some poignant thought to explain my state, some eloquent way of describing it in order to find inspiration and encouragement in the most mundane experiences of this day, like cooking dinner in a fog. Why can't I think straight? Why is inspiration evading me today? Why don't I have any thoughts?? I need some thoughts to go with my collage!! Any thoughts. Please.


And then it finally breaks through the fog. I. AM. TIRED.


T-I-R-E-D.


Oh.


That explains a lot. I reflect on my week to realize that we have been up with the dog, who has had a pooping issue, several times a night for the past couple nights. And then you add in the night I drank coffee too late, the night that I was stewing on issues instead of giving them to the Lord, the night with a restless spouse, and then last night when the baby woke up at 4:30am, after I'd only finally fallen asleep a few hours before. I'm tired. And in a tired, non-inspired, thoughtless fog.

And you're just a different person when you're tired, you know? This tired person version of me is not my favorite form that I come in, so on that note, and despite the fact that I did in fact have that fourth cup of coffee {I may have just fallen over flat on my face if I didn't, though, so it was really a matter of survival, a basic life or death issue}, I'm going to get some sleep.

And hopefully I'll make more sense tomorrow.


Night!