Random.

"I should be sleeping but instead I'm ________"

Usually, I fill the blank with "bejewled blitz," "texting," etc...

Tonight, I fill the blank with blogging.

Occasionally this will happen to me. My body will be exhausted but my brain will be going a mile a minute, and the only way to slow it down, is to start writing something. I look at my brain as a cluttered storage unit. The more I write down, the more junk I can clear out.

The goal is sleep....so here are some random thoughts, and hopefully the zzzzzs will kick in.

Retainers are a bitch.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I was first given my retainer my 3rd year in high school. It is blue and sparkly, and at this point in my life, it looks downright retarded. I remember sitting in the orthodontist chair the day I received it. I remember the orthodontist lecturing me on this ridiculous contraption and its purpose, as if she was telling me the meaning of life. I ate up every word she said.

"You must wear your retainer every night for the rest of your life, or your teeth will move, and you'll be back at square one."

I went into panic mode. I envisioned my adult years lying next to a boyfriend or husband and having to sneak off to the bathroom in the middle of the night to insert my hideous retainer. I thought of all of the lies I would have to tell the future men in my life so that I would be able to secretly get away with wearing this retainer. I looked at my retainer as a dating death sentence.

Many years later, I hardly wear the retainer. I might pop it in once a week for kicks....in fact, right now I'm wearing it...and let me tell you...it hurts like a bitch.

My grandma passed away about 7 years ago, but she'll pop into my thoughts at the most random moments. Today she popped into my thoughts on my way home from work. I remember something she used to tell me as a kid.

She would always say, "I love you so much, I can't stand it."

I would always cheerfully respond with, "I can't stand you either, grandma."

As a kid, I never understood why she would collapse in laughter every time I said this. I was just trying to tell her that I loved her with all my heart. But I figured, if I was getting a positive response from saying it, I was going to keep on saying it.

Boy, I was a strange child.

When I was a kid, I started a club with my cousin and little brother. It was called the "tooth club." We had discovered a glorious way to fill our pockets with cash without having to wait for an allowance. We found a plastic container and called it the "tooth holder," and we decided that we would cash in our teeth with the tooth fairy and reap the benefits. When it occurred to us that we would have to deliberately knock out our own teeth just to speed up our new banking system, we ended the club.


When I was in middle school, my parents somehow ended up owning a baby blue station wagon. It had originally belonged to my grandma, but she decided to give us the car at some point. The car comfortably seated 10 people. It was a tank. When the station wagon got old, the windows used to get stuck. One day, the very back window got stuck, and my mom's solution to fix the window, was to patch it up so that rain and leaves didn't blow into the back of the car. Of all the things she chose to close the window up with, she picked a neon pink shower curtain decorated with tiny yellow fish. Occasionally, the shower curtain would come untucked, and the bottom end would flap around in the wind on the freeway. It was as if the station wagon was wearing a super hero cape.


And now it is 11:04 pm, and I officially feel like I can sleep.

If you made it to the bottom of this blog, you deserve a reward.