You are still sleeping. I am awake, coffee just served to me, by me. The dishwasher is emptied. My email read. I listened to you fall asleep in the opening hours of today, while I tossed the bed figuratively since I was trapped by kittens sleeping along side of me, between my legs and a dog below my feet.

Thoughts swirled my brain as I tried to sleep, anxieties mounting, thoughts piling atop one another like a multicar pileup on the bridge, tottering, swaying in the winds as inert passengers hope not to fall into the inky waters below. In the light of day the thoughts that held sleep hostage are there, but muted, barely staying still enough for me to grab hold to challenge, banish, or wallow in.

I tried math tricks to train my mind around something harmless rather than have it run rampant through the thickets of school, money, the interview this morning, the class I teach tonight, Sunny's cancer, the mess that is my home, my burgeoning size. It didn't really work as I had a devil of a time doing multiplication trying to determine whether a number was prime or not.

I feel held hostage by my lack of school work, my procrasination is not serving any purpose here. It really isn't, yet it holds court as if to mock my desire to move on and up with my working life. Every day I concoct a plan, a schedule that includes study time, and each day none happens. Sometimes I think, if I would just finish my office, so that I have a retreat to do my work, that would help. Indeed it might well, but again that doesn't happen either.

Each time I woke, I searched the boundaries of my body for ways to move that would not upset the position of a feline, too much. It worked, probably more for them then for me. As usual I am quite positive that I had many dreams, but now that I have been awake for more than two minutes, the visions have faded and blended into the maze of memories unrecoverable. The only one that continues to permeate is one about The Girlfriend's family. Apparently in the world of my dreams they have some yearly todo in a hotel, where they rent huge swathes of the property essentially taking over to hand out donations, and yearly stipends to the younger generation with great fanfare that includes trinkets based on the size of the check. Included in the festivies are performances by people who I don't believe were related but perhaps had fiscal ties which supercede blood ones. That part is fuzzy. In the dream I was conscious that this was my first soiree with The Family and I was on my best behavior.

Oh, now I remember a dream that preceded this one, just a bit. It was like being in a movie from the '40s and involved a husband and a wife tale and a box of old fashioned tampons. Yes, I know. I warned The Girlfriend early on that it was a scary place inside my brain.

I have about an hour to compose myself to leave for my interview. I think that might be just enough time to redirect this vague sense of things being very, very wrong and dazzle these folks with charm and off the cuff humor about adolescents in residential placements.