A few weeks ago, I saw the crescent moon hanging in the
evening sky and worried that I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. The waxing
moon casts a sleeping spell on me and brings insomnia to my pillow. I went to
bed on time, but by 3:00 the shadows from my neighbor’s overzealous security
light were dancing on the ceiling overhead. Insignificant worries circled my
head like some surreal merry-go-round full of pale horses of woe.
I got on the merry-go-round when I began to beat myself up
over a scheduling mistake that could potentially cost me a few hundred dollars.
That led to fears of not having enough money for an upcoming trip I wanted to
make with my wife. Then I worried about the arrangements of said trip and its
details. Those details reminded me of things I still needed to prepare for an
upcoming church assignment. The preparation I needed to complete reminded me
that I needed to rearrange my schedule. Rearranging my schedule made me stress
about the mistake I made, and it started all over again twirling around in my
head with some macabre music playing in the background.
After about thirty minutes on that fruitless merry-go-round,
I decided I wanted off. I slipped out of bed, put on a robe, and went
downstairs. As I quietly closed my bedroom door, I heard the icemaker dump a
load of ice in the fridge downstairs. It struck me as odd that I noticed it. I
padded down the stairs and stood before the fridge. The neighbor’s security light
bathed the kitchen in enough light that I didn’t need to flip on the overhead
light. I yanked open the door to fridge and pulled out the milk. The jug wasn’t
very full so I twisted off the cap and chugged the rest of it down, hoping that
it would help me sleep.
As I waited for the lactose to lull me to sleep, I decide to
sort my mail. I grabbed the stack from my box and plopped down on the stairs to
shuffle through the stack of insurance advertisements, credit card offers, and
home mortgage refinance offers. While I sorted the mail, I heard one of the
dogs scratching himself vigorously at the top of the stairs. Almost everything
in the mail had something to do with money. Of course all of those advertisements
about money reminded me of my expensive blunder, and the merry-go-round of
inconsequential worries started up again.
By 3:30 am I had sorted all of my mail, and my dog was still
scratching. I could hear the tag on his collar jingle every time his foot
thumped against the floor as he tried to relieve his itch. I figured that it
was his form of insomnia, but when I checked on him I saw that he had scratched
himself until his fur was red with blood in several places. I petted him and
tried to calm him. Some troubles are like his itch. They aren’t serious, but we
can’t stop scratching them. So, we scratch away until we draw blood over
nothing.
After he calmed down and stopped scratching, he took a drink
and came back to sit beside me. I petted him until he fell asleep and I could
put something on his paws to prevent further damage. I calculated his age. He
was getting old, but then again, so was I. Here we both were wasting our night
away scratching at an itch that we could never satisfy.
I slipped away from him and threw away the junk mail. Then I went back to the fridge and found
a chocolate malt protein drink hiding in the doorway. I wondered if it might
help. I read the label and laughed. The words, “contains no milk” were plastered below the brand name that included
the word “milk.” It was almost as
ironic as me losing sleep over worrying about losing sleep. I checked the date
and chugged it on down. Then I made a list of all the horses on my
merry-go-round so I could deal with them in the morning and slipped around my
itchy dog now fast asleep on the stairs to my comfortable bed in hopes of going
back to sleep.
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