Terminal insomnia
The little numbers down in the lower right-hand corner of my screen mock me. "1:07 AM." One-oh-seven AM. At least one child will be awake in less than six hours, which means I will be awake again in less than six hours. But, instead of sleeping, I sit here. I am in total darkness, except for this screen and the myriad LEDs shining from my computer and its various peripherals.

I'm not even sure what's keeping me awake, save the two post-4 p.m. Dr Peppers. I'm even less sure where this little trip is going to take us. But at least in here, I'm not keeping The Wife awake with my uncertainty. One of us will be reasonably well-rested in less than six hours.

In years past, I would have gotten in the car (at the time, actually, it was a truck), turned on the high-beams and snapped in a cassette tape. I would have had no particular place to go. I would have started by cruising the streets of Anytown past the houses of people I knew, seeing if by chance a party had run late or some such. Failing that, I would have headed past a city limit sign and burned off some fuel and some time. Maybe my fishing pole would have been in the back of the truck; maybe I would have gone to a moonlit lake near town and tried to catch some fish. Maybe I would have had a spiral notebook in the floor or behind the seat of the truck; maybe I would have sat at that moonlit lake, doing what I'm doing now. Maybe I would have just kept driving, winding up in Oklahoma or Arkansas or Kansas. (Don't worry; I lived in the southwestern corner of Missouri. None of those places was that far away.) I would have made it home around sunrise, just in time to fall asleep for five or six hours, getting some rest in time to be at work at 4 p.m.

To say I am a night person would be a dramatic understatement. I lived an unnatural existence for a very long time. In college, I dated a girl who went to another school, three hours away from Anytown. My weekends were often spent as follows: Go to work at 4 p.m. on Friday, cover a ballgame, write my story, and leave for Columbia around 1 a.m. She'd meet me outside her dorm at 4. If we didn't get hassled by an RA (and we never did; I'm pretty sure the RA was a myth), we'd go back in and fall back asleep until about 11 a.m. Get lunch, talk, do whatever. I'd leave at 4 p.m. or so and be back at work at 7 p.m. Saturday night, and work until 1 a.m. or so, when I'd meet my friends out somewhere. That would keep me up until 5 or 6.

Then I got married to a night person. I worked nights, she worked nights, and it was not uncommon for us to wake up just in time to get to work at 4 p.m. You can imagine what an adjustment it was for us when we had a kid. Babies are not night people nor day people. They sleep when they want, and most usually, they don't sleep when you really wish they would.

I had a day job for 11 months in 1993 and hated it. I've had this most recent day job for a year and a half, and my body clock still hasn't really adjusted. I sleep now because my body forces me to. I am a person who needs nine or 10 hours of sleep a night. I get five or six most nights. I'm on my way to getting less than that tonight.

There are those numbers again. "1:24 AM." Mocking me. Wonder if the numbers can tell me which kid is going to wake up in less than six hours?