I don't know why I need to pee every night at 4 in the morning. Maybe years of tending bar until close, winding down after work, second-shift factory jobs, studying at the last minute in college, or cleaning up middle-of-the-night kid vomit messed me up. Maybe those things derailed my natural circadian rhythms. Whatever happened to my natural cycle (assuming I had one) I just thought you should know that if you want to break into my house at 4 in the morning, I'm wide awake and very likely to pee on you.
It becomes problematic when I can't get back to sleep. My brain is somehow hot-wired into this nonsensical overdrive of stupid ponderings: the etymology of cliches and figures of speech, designs for paintings or mechanical devices, manipulating the numbers of significant events to look for patterns... Sometimes I could swear that I'm certifiably insane every morning at 4am, but I'm just trying to go back to sleep. These crazy things zoom in and out, and like a bad 80's song, they get stuck in my head for hours.
The next day when I should be a productive human being I'm looking up how the phrase, "It's raining cat and dogs" became a common term. "Has an astronaut ever felt 'under the weather'?" or do people who live "down under" in Australia every use the term "feeling on top of the world"? Also, I've eaten raw oysters, and quite like them, but I've never inspected them for a heart or brain or guts or anything...how do they work? Where is an oyster's...you know...private parts? Even worms have hearts and anuses. Then maybe the oyster is more like coral, and considered an animal, but is more like a plant because it doesn't poop. Wait...I didn't want to post incorrect information and just looked it up. Oysters do poop. Googled it. Now I have to google whether coral poop or not.
Last night I woke up wondering why I know Ulysses S. Grant's middle initial. I don't know 9/10 of my friends' middle initials. What's with the "S?" I had to know this morning. Like, how many regular Ulysses Grants were running around at the time to make him feel so compelled to use his middle initial? Was he falsely humble about his middle name?
Like:
"What's your name soldier?"
"Uh, well, Sir, it's actually Ulysses Super-duper Grant, but I just go by Ulysses S. Grant so to not appear to be so ostentatious."
"Oh, very well then. Way to be humble, but why not drop the "S" all together?"
"Sir, there's so many Ulysses Grants running around doing great things, sir. I wanted to make sure they get credit also. These are confusing times."
Then, I find out that's not even his real name. His real first name was Hiram. That's another one you hear a lot, right?
You know, sometimes I privately dare the authorities to look up my search history...then I think about "big brother" and that reminds me of that movie "Conspiracy Theory" and the whole assassins (also a lot of "S's" in assassins) theory where they all have middle names. And then suddenly the track derails and I remember I have a chicken carcass cooking outside in a crockpot to make bone broth because otherwise it makes the house smell funky and Chris can't sleep. Suddenly it's 5:30 am and I'm standing outside in the driveway in my pajamas making sure the crockpot is turned off.
Anyway, sometimes people want me to describe myself or they ask what I'm into or how I "tick". I really don't know. I swear that I don't get it either. I feel like that TV you had when you were a kid where you messed with the aluminum-foiled, clothes-hangered, rabbit ears until you got something to watch and you just went with it. It was never questioned, really. Maybe a train car or semi truck on the highway or a UFO interfered with the reception. I remember getting a better radio signal from the antenna if I held the end in one hand and held my other arm up in the air. Maybe it was the salt and water in my blood conducting the signal...maybe I had special powers...maybe all that exposure to television-waves gave me a tendency to wake up every morning at 4am with my brain bollixed up about things that make no difference?
I'm not going to worry about it right now though. It's almost midnight, and I'm pretty tired. Go figure.
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