Uh Oh!

I don't want to write this morning. Yes, I woke up at 3am for no apparent reason again. But I didn't write.

This is my nephews' new favorite phrase, "For no apparent reason." They say it all the time and it invariably cracks me up. My dad was in town for the holidays and we took the boys to the Pacific Science Center one day. There was supposed to be a holiday train in one of the other buildings that we were trying to find, so I had the four-year-old on my shoulders when he exclaimed, "We're just wandering around in the frickin' rain for no apparent reason." He's sometimes a very world-weary boy that makes me laugh so hard. I like to watch them both discover a new word or phrase and test it out over & over. Their joy at language and discovery is inspiring.

So, at 3am, I was starving and craving some really bad food. And since I've been very careful about my eating, I had no really bad food in the apartment. I didn't roll over and force myself to try to sleep some more. I didn't get up and force myself to try to write something. I didn't get on Craigslist. I didn't pick up the book I started last night. I absolutely, positively did not try to analyze whether I was really hungry or whether I was empty in some other way. I didn't try to find some not really bad food instead. No, I slipped on some jeans and a sweatshirt over my pj top and went to the 24-hour Walgreens two blocks from my house. It was surprisingly full of people for 3am. Or maybe not so surprisingly. Maybe there's a whole host of lonely, empty people wandering around 24-hour markets at 3am all over the place, every night. And, I learned, I didn't even need to put on jeans -- I would have fit in perfectly in my pjs. Maybe I'll have to go back again tomorrow to see if the same people are there or if it's a whole new group.

I got some Nutter Butters and some chocolates. Oh, and some chocolate milk to wash it all down with. You can make a pretty damn fine sandwich with Nutter Butters and Ghirardelli Intense Dark Espresso Escape squares. I ate some sandwiches and then crawled back into bed and tried to force myself to sleep some more. You'd think I would have gotten on the internet then, all fortified with really bad food, but, no I just wanted to crawl back under the covers and pretty much just stop thinking.

Here I am now, on a post-binge come down, not wanting to write, trying to tell myself it's just premenstrual cravings and not something deeply meaningful. Which brings me back to the phrase, "For no apparent reason". I think I'm trying to convince myself that I can say, "I went to the store and gorged on really bad food at 3am for no apparent reason." Are you buying it? I feel the need to point out that I did not eat all the Nutter Butters nor all the chocolates. Which means, of course, they are sitting right in front of me right now, but I'm not eating them right now. Although, since they are here, there's virtually no chance I'll go the rest of the day without eating some more. Maybe a whole bunch more. I don't know yet. But I can a least recognize that I won't be eating them for no apparent reason. That's good, right?

I can't begin to tell you how much I don't want to think about it any more right now, much less write about it. There's a pretty good chance I'm going to read a book now, but not a good, demanding book, eat some Nutter Butters later, and some time later fall into a really bad food stupor that I will call a nap. Great day. Oh, and it's raining.