Almost every night, at roughly 9:30 PM, I fall asleep on the couch. My husband and I are usually in the middle of watching TV and let me just go ahead and say thank goodness for our DVR, or I would never know what the heck Jack Bauer is up to.

The lights are on in the living room, the television is loud, the dogs are playing and yelping at each other, the coffee table is leaving deep indentations in my calves and my laptop is burning a hole in my thighs. But, boy can I sleep! All I have to do is set my head at an extremely awkward angle so that when I wake I’ll barely be able to move my neck, and I am OUT.

Sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 my husband will tell me to go to bed, at which time I rub my eyes, mumble something about being “so tired”…you know, because it isn’t obvious…then head upstairs.

When I climb into bed I begin, what I refer to as, my ballet.

This little dance starts with me on my right side as I notice that my top pillow is too close to the edge of the mattress. Then the top pillow is too high in the back and too flat under my head. Then the bottom pillow has slid toward the back of the bed. I simply can not get comfortable.

I flip over to my left side and start again. Tossing, turning, fluffing, adjusting, and flipping over and over again. For real, it’s like Baryshnikov up in here.

Last night this went on for many minutes and when I finally got settled just so, I realized that I had forgotten to take off my socks.

One of these nights, I’m just going to stay on the couch.

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Do you ever wake up with a zit in your ear, a pulled muscle in your back from lifting a case of water and a nose that will not stop running no matter how many times you blow it, then notice that one of your favorite shirts has a hole in it and that your super-expensive work shoes are all scuffed up, and then you laugh as you think, “Who cares…I’m a lunch lady” and remember how, because of your line of work, you went to the grocery store yesterday with baked rotini on your forehead?

Yeah. Me too.

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My mind is rarely at rest. As an insomniac, I have taken to keeping my phone on my nightstand so I can jot down the thoughts that pop into my head at 3:00am. It seems that the middle of the night is when I frequently remember that I need to pick up a birthday card, or that we need eggs or that the permission slip for my daughter’s field trip is two days overdue.

During the day, my mind is constantly occupied as well. If I’m not reading, writing or watching television, then my brain starts getting busy. But, this isn’t when I have coherent thoughts…this is when my head is filled with irritating music.

For instance, every day when I make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at work, I sing “Bootylicious”. That’s right. I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly. On Sloppy Joe days, I channel Adam Sandler. When we serve fruit salad, it’s The Wiggles.

The problem is that I don’t invite this music. I don’t ask it to come in, sit down and kick up its feet. But, it does. Sometimes it stays for tea, then grabs a pillow and plops down for a long nap.

Yesterday my day started with my son humming “Oh Susanna”, which stayed in my head until I made the PBJ’s. “Bootylicious” hung around until one of my co-workers asked if I had seen the guy on American Idol singing “Pants on the Ground”. Maybe that song wouldn’t be so bad if I knew more than ten words.

After school, my son mentioned how much he likes the song “Down by the Station”. Which turned out to be awesome because it’s completely normal for a 38 year old woman to be walking through Target singing songs about “little puffer bellies all in a row”.

When I got home I found that someone had sent me a video of Justin Timberlake singing “Hallelujah” from the Hope for Haiti telethon. I knew it would be stuck in my head, likely for the rest of the day.

And after all that bad music, what was my first reaction when I saw that link in my in-box?

Hallelujah.

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Not too long ago, I almost saw a pedestrian get killed. Cross-traffic was stopped at a light, or so this woman thought, and she stepped off the curb and into the crosswalk. A car ran the red light and missed her by inches.

The scene often runs through my mind in slow motion. I picture her hair getting blown by the passing car that almost ran her down. Yet, in my memory, her hair isn’t tossed by a whoosh of air. It is a gentle breeze because the picture runs so slow.

I feel much the same way about the time my son stopped breathing after one of his surgeries. I remember the frenzy and the near-constant push of medication. I remember my son screaming and then suddenly hearing nothing but the nurse yelling at him. But, all of that craziness also drags on in my mind. It’s as if remembering it at the pace at which it happened is too much for me to endure.

When I go back to the moment when my aunt told me that my cousin had died, I see her mouth move sluggishly as she said, “He’s gone”. When I recall standing next to my niece in the ICU when she took her last breaths, the blips on her monitor barely move in my mind.

I think painful memories work that way. They travel through us at a rate so as not to shock our hearts into stopping.

But, I want the good memories to slow down. I need pictures of happiness and light to linger in my head. Those images are far too fleeting.

My New Year’s resolution is to stop walking around in a perpetual state of anxiety and make my brain happy. To nurse my soul and to stop letting bad thoughts plod along slowly. I want to make the good feelings last longer than the rotten ones.

All of the negative, slow motion moments in my life are wearing me down and it’s high time I sent them packing.

Then, I’m going to invite bliss and ask it to kick up its heels and stay a while.

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