so last night was the kind of night that you wake up at three:thirty in the morning really needing to pee and then go back to bed and toss and turn and toss and turn but just can't. fall. asleep. and after playing candy crush and checking instagram and putting down your phone to try and go back to sleep, you're still staring at the ceiling then the wall then the ceiling then the back of your eyelids just to look at the ceiling again. and then you grab your phone every fifteen minutes to find answers to extremely pressing questions like, how exactly do you pronounce fondant.

apparently this leads to the kind of evening where you sit down to write a blog post because you have stuff to say but then you keep getting distracted because your husband is watching dennis the menace and you haven't watched that movie in decades and oh look it's the tying the robber up scene and suddenly the movie is over, you've barely written a paragraph, and you've forgotten what you have to say.

but anyway.

the past week or so has been filled with the most perfect summer days. like, seriously, think of a good way to spend a summer day and we have spent it that way this week. do you like to sit outside eating frozen yogurt while kids splash in a fountain? did it. do you like to spend your day at the farm looking at baby animals and taking hayrides? did it. do you like to laze around the house playing video games and watching old disney movies? did it. do you like to gorge yourself on pizza and hot fudge sundaes? did it. do you like to eat half a chicken with your hands while you watch knights on horseback engage in fake battles to the death? well, that's tomorrow.

ideal as this summer is at the moment, though, it's reaching that point where thoughts of school and responsibility and everything else that i pretend doesn't exist during the summer months are starting to creep in. it is not fun.

also, remember how excited i was for landline? and how upset i was that i wouldn't get it before i left on vacation? well, as soon as i came back, it was the first piece of mail that i opened. and then i carried it around for the day. and then i threw it in my tote bag and carried it around for the next two weeks. and now the dust jacket looks worn and i still haven't even opened the front cover. two thousand fourteen really sucks as a reading year for me. 

now you're stuck in a moment, and you can't get out of it

i woke up today at nine o'clock. nine. and then i stayed in bed until nine:thirty. (i feel like i should mention that the only reason i woke up at all was because my sisters decided to have a whatsapp conversation in our group and i have this thing where i cannot silence my phone before bed because we have no landline and what if there is an emergency, i ask you. and my sisters have this thing where one has to be at work by nine and the other has kids and lives in a different time zone and neither have any consideration for their less-responsibility-ridden sister.) but anyway, nine. it was wonderful.

i've been having some struggles with the stuckness of my life. i think it was the red queen who said, "it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" (yes, i realize that being on the internet means there is no excuse for "thinking" anyone said a quote. two seconds and i could know for sure. but then i would also get sidetracked and this post would never be written. also, random fact: i first fell in love with this quote enough to memorize it not after watching/reading alice in wonderland, but after watching phoebe in wonderland. that movie, guys. it gets me every time.)

for a while now, it's felt like i was doing all the running i could do and, i guess predictably, i've been staying in the same place. still in school. still struggling for this degree. still not really doing much of anything. no kids. no house. no nothing. just... stuck. while everyone else seems to be moving forward. (before anyone tries to give me the whole you're-comparing-your-behind-the-scenes-to-their-highlight-reel or the just-'cause-it's-on-facebook-doesn't-mean-it's-real thing or the everyone-moves-at-a-different-pace-along-a-different-road speech, let me just say, i know. and i'm not actually comparing myself to other people because i got over that years ago. sorry guys, but for the most, i just really don't want your life, even if i might think it's fabulous. that is not the problem. the problem is the stuckness. them moving forward is just not giving me enough distraction from it.) and i couldn't figure out how i could possibly run any faster. (don't let the "couldn't" fool you into thinking i have everything figured out now.)

these past few weeks have been especially stressful and a whole roller coaster of stuff that i am not going to go into right now but that left me feeling very... something. raw? drained? constantly anxious? beat up and left on the side of the road to die? something like that. but at the same time they have been really good weeks filled with family and nightshirts and bunnies and laser tag and golf. and it's funny how that happens sometimes.

anyway, the point is that some days it's nice to stay in bed late not because of anything or despite anything. and even if your stomach still feels like its taken on a side job as a butterfly garden, sometimes, the stuckness doesn't feel so bad.

*Stuck in a Moment - U2

below is a very long laundry list of complaints and whining. you probably should just skip it and wait for the next post.

so basically, things have just really been sucky lately. october has not been my month, and if i see one more person post that they are grateful to live in a world where octobers exist, then i will very likely explode. this suckiness is really the reason that i have not been blogging because there are two kinds of sucky moods: ones that lead to good writing and that can pull on other emotions to elevate it and ones that you just can't write in because everything that comes out is bitter and makes people uncomfortable and is too frustrating to even write and you do not need anymore frustrations in your life at the moment so you just don't. i am so far into the second category that they've elected me their queen.

my life for the past few weeks:

i got lyme disease, as you all know, and was put on antibiotics for what feels like forever. the antibiotics are gross and make me extremely nauseous for hours two times a day and i still have a week left of them. extreme nausea leads to irritability and misery in case you didn't know.

it rained for the entirety of last week. and if you try to tell me that rain is pretty or remind me that i usually like rain then i hope you don't particularly like your face. rain makes doing anything and everything impossible. rain calls for procrastination and lazy days and pushing off the papers you have to write until the sun comes back. which it apparently never does anymore. after struggling for a week to write a five page paper, i finally finished it over the weekend only to realize that i did the whole thing wrong and needed to redo it. which i did. probably poorly. i still have two more papers to do which may be due this friday and may be due next friday and i am too scared to check which it is.

i've been having minor shoulder pains that decided to escalate overnight and and result in excruciating pain and me not being able to move my arm the day before yesterday. yesterday it seemed like it was getting better, (yesterday was kind of a respite from everything which was pretty awesome because it was also eid, but now i kind of resent it because it just makes the lows seem so much lower) but sometime around three last night it decided that it didn't want to get better after all and that maybe waking me up from the pain and not letting me go back to sleep was a good idea. i finally fall back into a light sleep around six something, only to be woken up at six:thirty by my husband's old phone's alarm that was going off in the living room, meaning i couldn't just reach over him, turn it off, and go back to sleep. not that i could have done that anyway since my shoulder was killing me even at rest and hurt even more when i moved any part of my body. still does, so that's fun.

(i went to the doctor for it yesterday, and she said it wasn't from the lyme disease which i guess is good because that means the antibiotics are probably working, but also bad because i don't know what it's from and therefor can't really treat it. she was insistent that i just bumped my arm on something, which i am one hundred percent sure is not what happened. since it was starting to feel better and i really just wanted to leave her office yesterday, i didn't really argue. i am now wishing that i did. her entire examination of it consisted her of telling me to raise my arm as high as i could straight up. that was it. she didn't even touch it to feel if there was tumor growing on it. which i'm pretty sure there isn't, but still.)

because of the nausea and the inability to find a comfortable position that does not make me cry from pain and then from the frustration of having wet spots on my pillow from tears, i have not been sleeping well. the exhaustion is actually what's causing all of the tears. i'm just crying over everything because i'm so. effing. tired.

oh, and my doctor also told me yesterday that there's really no way to know if the antibiotics got rid of the lyme disease because i will continue to test positive for it for at least the next few years. i could still get it again, though, and unless i get major symptoms again i will not know that i have it (because of the testing positive regardless) and will probably end up not knowing about it and waiting too long to treat it and having it mess with my brain and ugh. just ugh, okay?

i think i just really need to sleep. my tolerance level would be so much higher if i could just do that.

and my apartment is a mess and i have papers to write and a ton of grading to do and everyone is on vacation except me and i am tired and in pain and annoyed. i bought a pair of rain boots that are too small and the online store doesn't do exchanges. friday my sister, husband, and i were supposed to go out to celebrate and the universe messed that up, too. my breakfast today was gross and i just really want to crawl in bed with a book - not the one i just finished though because that was so, so, so bad - and stay there until october is finished. you can keep your pumpkin spiced lattes and colored leaves. wake me up when gingerbread lattes hit the menu and the trees have shaken off every last leaf.

the only reason i am posting this is because today is blog action day, and i have not missed a blog action day yet and refuse to miss it today. my post on human rights was more like a call for the entire world to die, though, so i thought maybe if i got some of this out of my system i could write a less morbid post. just in case i don't though, now you all know why. 

and this is how i ask for help, by pulling the fire alarm

remember those days when i would come on here and blog about how i was woken up by phone calls and construction workers? you may not because it hasn't happened in a blissfully long while. but this morning... oh, this morning was worse than anything.

i was torn from sleep way too early by the screaming wails of a banshee, shrill and ear-splitting and way, way too loud. as soon as my brain registered the fact that it was the inside apartments fire alarm and that i would have to leave, i started groping around my floor in the dark for something to put on. (due to religious reasons i could not just walk out in the shorts and t-shirt that i was sleeping in. i mean, i'm sure i could have if i thought my life was i danger, but i was too busy being confused and angry to think about that.) i go to the tower to get darcy, and he's just sitting frozen in his cage. i grab his carrier and unlatch the cage and he goes crazy. running around in circles in his cage out of fear and pummeling through his wooden house and food bowl and getting caught in his water bottle but not even slowing down. being way too early and way too loud, i freak out and think that his only two options are either snapping his neck/breaking a bone/suffering from some other such injury that looked imminent from the way he was running around not letting me touch him or to potentially burn to death in case it was a real fire. my husband saved him from both and got him in his carrier while i stuck a pillow over the fire alarm to muffle the sound a bit to calm him down so he'd be less terrified.

with fugitive bunny in hand (rabbits are technically not allowed in out apartment so we kind of can't let anyone know that he exists) we head outside. the out of apartments alarm is the deep, booming, bone-rattling alarm from shows that reminds me of pulsing read lights and falling ceilings and heroic running and the world ending. but of course you can also hear the banshee shrieks faintly from inside all of the apartments and it is loud enough to make me very angry. i start wishing horrible things on the person who caused all of this. it's not until i'm almost down to the outside world (third story apartment = stairs) that i realize that neither of us thought to bring our keys. aside from a couple with their dog, some guy that couldn't seem to decide which sidewalk he wanted to stand on, and some kids waiting for the bus (though it was super early and the bus that i always see doesn't come until almost nine so i don't know what school they go to), we were the only ones not warm inside of our cars. rather, we stood shivering on the sidewalk in the wind because it figures that the warm weather would decide to leave today.

anyway, after standing outside for what felt like forever (giving myself half a second to say that i hope it's not a real fire, though i kind of doubted that it was due to the lack of smoke and flames before i went back to my angry muttering), the fire trucks finally decide to grace us with their presence. they go into the middle building (the apartments are grouped in buildings of three for maintenance and fire alarms and stuff) and i decide to direct all of my cussing at the residents of that building. after poking around for a while, they come out and check our building, then they go and check the last building. then they wander around for a while outside, looking for a fire. any fire. they don't find one. they check some secret closet thingie to the side of my building, and i hear one say, "i thought it was a prank, but..." they walk around some more. we all wish that they would hurry up and declare it safe or turn off the alarms or both.

eventually, after realizing that we were all ripped unceremoniously out of dream land (or, at least those of us that didn't have kids or jobs or dogs that required us to be awake before the sun, which judging by people's faces and pajamas were most of us) for no good reason, they turned off the alarm and told us all to go home.

so basically, i hope that if a kid pulled the stupid thing or did something to set it off, s/he fails every single test s/he takes for the rest of the year and never gets another good night's sleep for the rest of their life. if it wasn't a kid, then i wish a lifetime of restless nights on whoever caused it.

only good thing: five minutes after we got inside it started pouring rain. i was calmed down enough to feel grateful that we weren't stuck in it.

*Flying Upside Down - Cold War Kids

trying hard not to smile though i feel bad

the other day i went back to my old high school to watch my brothers participate in an islamic competition game show thing. it was pretty awesome, even if it did end up starting an hour and a half late and the computer died halfway through the game. when the game show questions cd froze three times in a row, the teacher switched to just asking the questions orally. now, i don't know how many of you are faithful watchers of nickelodeon, but there's an episode of victorious (the one where jade and beck break up for the second time) where cat tells jade not to forget two when she counts to ten, because apparently some people forget it. anyway, the competition consisted of multiple choice questions, and every time the teacher would give the possible answers (he used one, two, three instead of a, b, c) he would forget the number two. it reminded me of cat. i found it hilarious.

it is possible (read: probable) that you won't find this as funny as i did, partly because, well, i'm the kind of person that laughs at the wrong times (after the game show they had a little prayer/remembrance thing for my sister's friend's mom that recently passed away. when the speaker stood at the podium crying for a minute and then ran out of the auditorium and we all just sat there in awkward silence, i was fighting a really strong urge to break into laughter. yup, i'm the kind of girl that laughs at funerals.) and partly because i'm not sure i have full control over this whole words to sentences to story process this morning.

i stayed up later than usual last night to watch ten things i hate about you, because come on, if there was ever a movie to ward off sleep for, it's one where heath ledger sings can't take my eyes off of you. apparently my body didn't get the memo that i was going to make up missed sleep this morning, though, because it woke up at seven like usual and then fell into a really light, half-sleep until eight:thirty. i don't feel tired, but i don't feel not tired, if that makes any sense.

anyway, i have an exam to get ready for and an apartment to clean. fun day ahead of me. but tomorrow night i will be officially done with my first semester of my phd program and good riddance i say.

*One Week - Barenaked Ladies

the hardest part is letting go of your dreams

so. what's your stance on dreams if you don't mind me asking? i'm not talking about goals and aspirations and those sparkly things that help you get through the day. no, i'm more concerned about those other things that keep your mind occupied at night when you are otherwise dead to the world. you know, the tv show that your brain puts on for the inside of your eyelids that you sometimes wish would just get cancelled already. yeah, those dreams.

you see, i've been having some dream trouble as of late. and by trouble i mean they are getting really effing obnoxious. not only do i wake up from them completely exhausted (i mean, really, body. i don't feel like my last days of non-marriedhood should be spent fighting the urge to fall and down and cry about how tired i am. plus, these black circles may be hard to cover.) but also, it is just really not the time to be dreaming any of this. i chalked them off to stress the first couple of nights, i said that my mind is just struggling to hold on to the sameness it has always known when i was shoving change down its throat like a celebrity giving charity (speaking of celebrities and charity, i have a really great story to tell you guys later). but it's been a while and you'd think my mind would have worked through its issues by now. only, it hasn't. and i really, really, really wish it would.

so anyway, where do you stand on dreams? how many of them actually mean anything and how many of them are just your brain putting out the trash at the end of the week? should people listen to dreams or should they file them under nonsense to be forgotten like the list of world capitals i had to memorize in high school? what would i regret more: listening to my dreams or ignoring them?

but most of all, how can i get a good night's sleep without having to suffer any dreams? i really miss sleep.

*Sleep - My Chemical Romance

don't wanna close my eyes, don't wanna fall asleep

most of the time, i hate taking naps. i wake up feeling gross and grumpy and usually worse than i would have felt if i had just stayed tired for a few more hours. mind you, sometimes i have days when i can take a nap and wake up refreshed like a normal/weird person depending on who you're asking. but those are few and far between. last night i fell asleep at around seven thirty or something while watching tv with my brothers and woke up about an hour later. now, in the grand scheme of things, an hour really isn't that long. and all i was missing was reruns of the fairly oddparents (speaking of which, have you guys heard about the movie for it this summer when they come to life? and timmy is played by drake bell and is twenty three but still acting like a kid so he can keep cosmo and wanda? i'm not sure how i feel about it. the commercial looks like it might be okay, but all i can do is think of avatar and cringe.) but somehow i woke up with a headache and a bad mood and a feeling that i just slept through half my life. i tried playing online scrabble, but after a turn or two realized that i just was not in the mood to think up words. then i started to read and even that couldn't make me forget how gross i was feeling. eventually, i just had to go to sleep even earlier than usual, and after already sleeping an hour, i ended up waking up at three. an hour of tossing and turning later, and i managed to sleep until six:thirty when my alarm woke me up after sleeping too long. i don't know about you guys, but when i sleep too long i wake up groggy and gross.

so basically, the moral of the story is not to take naps at night. or ever.

*I Don't Want to Miss a Thing - Aerosmith

just sleep

yesterday i was talking to my fiance and i said something along the lines of "no matter what's going on in my life or how i'm feeling or whatever, i sleep. i always sleep. nothing ever comes between me and my sleep." (which, by the way, cannot be farther from the truth. in fact, just the night before had been spent in fitful bursts of half-sleep because i was waiting for my alarm to go off because i was convinced i would oversleep and miss the appointment my sister and i had to go to. sometimes i say things with full conviction and then later realize that they are total lies. like once, i said that i don't read series. later, i realized that i read more series that i can count, but at the moment i was totally convinced it was true.) so anyway, that was apparently taken as a challenge by the universe or my body or something.

cue last night, it's getting close to when i usually sleep (yes, i'm old and have a usual bedtime. sue me.) and i am not in the least bit tired. so i decide to start watching the first season of boy meets world. i get through most of it (i think i have one, possibly two, episodes left). i look at the clock and decide that i should be asleep because there are handwriting packets that need to be done and arabic stories that need to be summarized and all before ten because that's apparently when elementary school boys' minds shut off. i turn off joe and try to go to sleep, but i am completely untired. i am also completely uncomfortable. while i have gotten used to the box of springs i sleep on when my grandma is here, my body was seemingly in revolt last night. or the mattress was. either way, i could not get in a position that did not include metal springs digging into my ribs. i think the springs might have multiplied or something, but it was not fun.

while i was trying to get comfortable, i was writing out this blog post  in the back of my mind. i have no idea why. it didn't sound anything like this because i have a leaky faucet in the back of my mind too that was drip drip dripping all night causing the ink of the post to run. it's completely unreadable now. blame the unsolicited worries that keep nagging me.

anyway, i must have fallen asleep because next thing i know i hear ali running down the stairs screaming, "abdullah sarah said yes! she's coming to make you breakfast." at which point i wake up and scream back, "no i'm not" before realizing i would probably end up waking my sister and grandma and pulled myself out of bed. grumpy from lack of sleep, i very ungraciously make my brother breakfast at six before burying under my covers and trying once again to get to sleep.

but while i woke up later feeling slightly resentful towards boy meets world and bagels, the handwriting packet is done which leaves only an arabic story to be read and summarized before homework for the day can be called complete.

*Sleep - My Chemical Romance

after all, i'm only sleeping

Sometimes, I ignore the words and focus instead on the spaces in between them. I close my ears to the messages being spoken by the page and lose myself in the white emptiness of the margins. I drown in the nothingness until it is all there is.

Sometimes, I only listen to the silences in your stories. I let the words slip through my head without gaining purchase and hold on to the breaths you take with both hands. Sentences fall from your lips unheeded as I wait impatiently for every pause.

Sometimes, I look at the patches of blue between the clouds everyone else is making pictures out of. If I open my eyes wide enough, the tears that pool in them help to block out the white. There are no bears dancing across the sky merging into cats and turning into umbrellas. There is only uninterrupted blue that does nothing but simply exist.

Sometimes, I watch the sky instead of the stars. I only see the vast blackness between each sparkling pinprick of light. If I stare into the black long enough, I can shrink myself down to nonexistence, and lose my identity on the breeze sweeping by.

-
and sometimes i write stuff when i'm sleeping. i woke up this morning to find this scrawled across the back of the midterm i have near my bed so i can review it for my final at every chance i get (it's been turned over and ignored for the past week and will probably stay that way until monday morning). i actually don't think i wrote this in my sleep (though i would love to say that i could sleep-write. that would be cool) because i vaguely remember waking up a couple of times last night. i must have scribbled this out one of those fits of sleeplessness.

*I'm Only Sleeping - The Beatles

abdullah: ali woke me up this morning at four.
ali: yeah when i woke up i was so excited that i had to wake him up too.
abdullah: it was barely even four and he was screaming 'abdullah wake up! it's eid! wake up!' and i was having a wonderful dream about dancing with a pony.
me: ...?
abdullah: *sigh* his screaming didn't let me finish my dream.
me: umm... dancing with a pony?
abdullah: yeah, i dunno, but it was wonderful.

i pray your brakes go out running down a hill. i pray a flowerpot falls from the windowsill and knocks you in your head like i'd like to. i pray your birthday comes and nobody calls. i pray you're flying high when your engine stalls. i pray all your dreams never come true.

Dear Mr. No Number,

I hope that, as you wake up this morning, an hour late because your alarm didn't go off, that you stub your toe getting out of bed. I hope that you slip in your shower after getting shampoo in your eye and hit your head really, really hard against the wall. There's nothing left in your skull to really damage, but the pain is enough for me. I hope that in the middle of this the hot water runs out and you are forced to rinse your hair in the icy grips of cold water on this cold day. I also hope you catch pneumonia because of this. I hope you burn your breakfast and spill your coffee on yourself. I hope you fail every class you have today and/or get fired from work. I hope your car breaks down on your way home and you realize your phone battery is dead. I hope no one stops to help you. I hope that, when you do finally get home, you find it has been broken into. But most of all, Mr. No Number, I hope that your life turns into one endless hellish day of misery. Forever. And then i hope you die.

Sincerely,

Me

you may have noticed that i did not wake up on the right side of the bed today. in fact, i woke up on the wrong side several times over. it's bad enough that for some reason i couldn't get to sleep last night, and then when i was dazed enough for my body to pretend it was asleep (if i lay in bed in the dark with my eyes closed and don't consciously think, but rather let my thoughts wander on their own, i go into a dazed state that may possibly confuse my body into thinking it's getting enough rest for the night. is this only me?) my brother needs me for something (incidentally, this is the one interruption of my sleep i did not mind). but after still not being able to get to sleep for hours some moron thinks that two:thirty in the morning is a good time to call. with a blocked number. after being very rudely wakened up, i stared at my phone indignantly and ignored the caller. immediately after i missed the call, i thought of all the people who it could have been and i should have answered. i'm just getting back to sleep again when Mr. No Number calls again. maybe it's my sister going into labor, i think. she sometimes blocks her number by accident. when i went to answer, though, i somehow rejected. oh well, i thought. something about this second call must have woken up my sister (according to facebook, though i woke her up by sleep talking. huh.) and she gets out of bed for some reason. at three in the morning. she starts to drink water loudly from her water bottle and crinkle bags and chew and turn on her computer without turning off the sound so i could hear that obnoxious windows boot up sound. i'm seriously thinking about getting up and killing her to shut her up, but then she gets up, pretty loudly for three am, and moves to another room. i'm just going back to sleep when, at three:thirty, surprise of all surprises, Mr. No Number calls again. i manage to answer this time, thinking it must be important, and you know what i get on the other line? beeping. like someone pressing the number pad. like they were trying to talk to me in freaking morse code or something. i hang up and am awoken a little later by my sister getting back into bed, which actually wasnt loud so i dunno. every ten minutes after that i wake up in a panic sure that i had slept through my alarm because i was so tired. i hadn't. five thirty on the dot, my alarm finally goes off, and i feel like i haven't slept a wink without even the satisfaction of doing anything to keep me up. and i'm leaving the house in fifteen minutes. i'm not even dressed.

Mr. No Number, i blame all of this on you, and i wish you a very slow and painful death.

oh, and while i'm at it, Mr. Internet Connection, i'm super tired of your recent mood swings. if you decide to disconnect one more time i will come over and tear your modem apart with my bare hands. i am so not in the mood for you.

disclaimer: i usually do not wake up in such a homicidal mood and usually have no problem answering people's two in the morning phone calls. i actually do it quite a lot. but if you're gonna call, don't block your number and speak english. or i will make it my life's mission to find and kill you.

i realize that title's really long, but i couldn't choose just one.

*I Pray For You - Jaron and the Long Road to Love

don't bother waking me at five in the morning

what is it about five in the morning that makes it impossible for my body to feel rested? i mean, it doesn't matter how much i sleep, when my alarm goes off at five and very rudely drags me out of my sleep, i could swear i've just shut my eyes and i'm overcome with urges to throw the stupid clock at the wall. i don't, of course. partly because it's attached to the wall and i can't movie it without moving my bookcases (and really, who wants to do that at five in the morning?) and partly because i have actually grown pretty attached to the little pest. so instead of throwing it against the wall, i pull myself out of bed and walk to the other side of the room to turn it off before it wakes up my sister. (yes, i put my alarm clock far-ish away from me so that i can't just hit snooze and end up oversleeping. it works really well in theory, but in real life i tend to get up, walk over to it, decide i don't want to make this same walk every minute and a half for the next ten minutes, turn off the clock and say there's no way i'll actually fall back asleep in that short amount of time, and wake up an hour and a half later for the frantic rush of getting ready before i'm even later.)

things have been... hectic around here lately, to say the very least, and i've seen way too much of five in the morning. when i go to sleep at two and wake up at seven, i'm perfectly fine. so the first night i figured, sleeping at twelve will be fine. it wasn't. nor was it the next night. or when i started sleeping at eleven:thirty. when i sleep for seven hours a night, i'm more than fine. you can't be more rested than i am. so last night i went to sleep at ten:thirty. that's seven and a half hours, people! and yet, all i want to do is crawl into bed and sleep forever.

so i have decided that i do not like five am anymore. i used to be okay with it. every day of high school started at five for me, and i never complained once. (okay, so i might have, but i still didn't mind it that much.) but now i'm too old to endure it and too young to enjoy it. gah.

*Five in the Morning - A (i feel like i'm cheating because i've never heard of this song before in my life, but i'm lazy and google told me to use it.)

lately there's been too much of this

i have to say, the way things have been going lately has just been draining me. everywhere i turn there are things waiting impatiently to be done, tapping their toes and letting out overly dramatic sighs. it seems that if something, anything, can go wrong, it most definitely will. i wake up every morning and go through five days before night finally comes and i can lay in bed trying to find relief in another restless night. tears are not hiding behind every corner, they are waterfalling down buildings and flooding streets, but not from me. i'm denied the little comfort tears can bring. stupidity is running rampant, and it seems that no one is immune to it. i am tired of trying to just hold out for tomorrow, because tomorrow is no better than today. it hasn't been in a long time. i'm tired.

"I'm too tired or too numb to cry. The only thing I feel is a desire to be somewhere else." 

~Katniss, The Hunger Games

on a happier note, or at least a funnier one, let me share with you all a story someone in my class shared with us today about how completely tech-challenged some people still are today. so the kid in my class works in tech support and went today to help someone in person who couldn't be helped on the phone. when he went to the dude's office (an older guy) he found him sitting at his desk, looking confusedly at his screen, with his cd drive open holding his coffee. yes, the guy actually honestly thought that the cd drive was a cup holder built in to his computer. like he really really thought that. the kid had to explain to him that his cup holder was in fact where you would put CDs and DVDs and stuff. maybe it's just because i grew up with computers, but it amazes me how much people just don't understand about them. it's a little sad, but gives us entertaining stories to listen to during a long and boring lecture.

*Someday - Nickelback

please don't wake me, no

i wish my inner alarm clock could be turned off... or had a snooze button at the very least. after a chaotic day yesterday of barely sleeping, doing umrah, finishing 87% of packing, cleaning 93% of the house, going to eat at an aunt's house which entailed some cleaning up, more confusion than my tired head was ready for, and giant mugs of green tea that could probably feed half of the country, and then coming to the cousins' house which means walks to stores for snack shopping and hanging out with their nieces which requires more energy than you might think, and then making plans to go out and canceling those plans, and eating cheeseburgers at three in the morning with giant cups of pepsi even bigger than the green tea mugs, and then watching a movie up until a few minutes before 6 am... i just really wish i didnt have to wake up at 9:30 all the time. you know? at the moment, i feel fine, but i'm pretty sure the hours of non-sleep i am currently stacking up between today and yesterday will rear their ugly heads sooner or later. i'm going with sooner, too... like right when i need my energy the most because the two kids we're sitting with will more than likely multiply to six or eight by the end of the day. have you ever sat with eight kids each vying for your attention who want you to play/talk/sit with them and only them?? not as fun as the sudden rise in your popularity may seem.

anyway, two more days here before my sunday morning flight back home... or other home. and then i have a list of things i've been having shipped to my sister's to read and watch. and i have school to get started with and parking permits and ridiculously priced textbooks to buy. and there may be a few other big things brewing that may possibly give me a few interesting blog posts so that's something.

*I'm Only Sleeping - The Beatles

the things i never said

so there are a few things that i've been meaning to write out here but they have been reduced to notes written in drafts for so long that i dont really think any of them can hold their own in individual posts anymore. so here is a list of (some of) them:

[one] we had a crazy sandstorm the other day. like one second the sky was completely clear and the next there was thunder and lightning and you could barely see out the window because of all the dust blowing around. trees were practically touching the ground under its force. it lasted less than half an hour but the aftermath was crazy. there's this automall near our house which is basically like a big mall of car dealerships and stuff. lots of glass walls, as you can imagine. or, there used to be before the storm broke them all. billboards toppled over and signs were fallen. like the metal pole things that holds the signs were bent over so it looked like it had just fell. trash was everywhere too. anyway, lots of destruction and im not gonna list all of it now but it was crazy for such a short and sudden storm.

[two] while sleeping over at my cousins the other day (who had work from 9-1 in the morning) we spent a lot of time with their nieces who live with them. do you know how hard it is to do disney song kereoke when you've never heard the song before? they did not understand that reading the lyrics did not automatically mean you could sing the song. but it was still lots of fun. we also went down to the store and bought a bunch of drinks (which one of the nieces mixed together into a mixed drink of juices and soda which was good at first but after the fourth cup was making me sick but there was a lot and we had to finish it) and snacks and watched cloudy with a chance of meatballs in the dark. the next morning me and one of the nieces had woken up early and watched hannah montana for a couple of hours. all in all, it was two days of me being a complete teeny bopper.

[three] as if i couldnt be excited enough for august twenty fourth releases, i just found out that city island is also being released that day. i think it may very well become my favorite day of the year. so hannah, that is also being shipped to your house. it kinda sucks that im excited for all this stuff that i will not be getting until almost a week later. also, the fact that a large chunk of money will suddenly disappear from my bank account on that day when the preorders become orders is totally worth it.

[four] too many people have been telling me i look tired lately. it's the second thing said to me after "hi" and is getting kind of old. okay. i know i look tired. yes, i do sleep enough. stop rubbing it in my face. it's getting old.

[five] actually, i think that's enough pointlessness for today. plus, im getting tired of typing this while also trying to help my brother with his arabic homework. and i just taught my other brother long division which he totally got and did easily so i feel surprisingly accomplished today. oh, and school is like practically tomorrow. ugh.

*Things I Never Said - Deep Purple

everyone is sleeping, i'm just here on my own

my sister tells me that we're sleeping over at my cousins' yesterday so i throw some stuff together and after we break our fast at our uncle's we are dropped off here. partly due to waking up early and being tired and partly from feeling off for the past few days and partly from the fact that there were a few people also at the cousins' i wasnt too thrilled to see just then, i went to sleep ridiculously early. ridiculously. everyone else stayed up until around 4:30 or 5 to eat before starting today's fast. as a result of my old ladiness, i woke up at 7:20 while everyone was still sleeping. it is now almost nine and ive been sitting in the living room in the eerie quiet of the house broken only by the fan revolving on the ceiling, and i can't help but think, what was the point of this again??

at least if i was home i'd have my brothers for company and a pool for entertainment.

also, there are around two weeks left of this weird summer vacation ive been floating in for the past two months. i'm not sure if i'm happy about that or not.

also number two, there is around ten days until mockingjay and the LOST complete series dvd collection are coming out. i'm excited. mockingjay will be sent to my sister's house and you have until i get back to read it and are not allowed to talk to anyone about it until after i have read it. okay? okay.

well, im off to find amusement. wish me luck.

*Everyone is Sleeping - Little Birdy

i wanna watch you sleeping peaceful

i slept over at my cousins' house last night. when we were younger, our parents used to drop us off at their house in the beginning of the summer and we'd see them once a week until it was time to go back to america. now, we rarely sleep over and this summer hardly even get to see them. so when we do sleep over, they get super excited (because, yes, we really are that awesome). anyway, i wake up this morning and have the following conversation with my cousin:

her: did you sleep last night?
me: yeah.
her: did you snore?
me: uh.. i wouldn't know. i don't think so.
her: did you sleep on your stomach?
me: um yeah... why? how do you know?
her: cause i was watching you.
me: uh...
her: creepy, right?
me: just a little.

*Watch You Sleeping - Blue Foundation

sometimes i wake up and i'm falling asleep

i've been sleeping ridiculous hours lately, but my dreams have been so stressful that i wake up from them more tired than i was going in. i wake up anxious. i haven't felt rested in weeks. i sleep seven or eight hours a night on average and then end up falling asleep the second i have a moment of still time. i just came back from my cousin's house. i slept the entire time i was there. the only time i saw them was when i was leaving to say bye, and one was already asleep. this has to stop because it is wasting the few moments that could possibly be confused with a summer vacation with pointless sleep. if i'm going to be exhausting myself, i'd much rather be awake for it. also, some of the dreams i dont even do anything in. everyone else is doing everything and i'm just stressing out and trying to get everything under control. the least my brain could do is let my dream self do something fun if it's going to be ruining my waking self's day. gosh.

*No More Keeping My Feet on the Ground - Coldplay

i spent so many nights thinking

i was trying to remember if i ever wrote this in my blog or not, but i couldnt. i remember having a conversation about it with a friend last year, but i just dont know if i blogged it. so if i'm repeating myself, oh well, what can i say? i have repetitive thoughts.

so i do my best thinking when i'm asleep. that's when i do most of the planning for schoolwork. that's when i can untangle things going on in my life that just seemed knotted beyond help. that's practically the only time i can make decisions. my brain does its best work when the rest of me is asleep. sleep is like a block of several hours where i can let rational thoughts take over. if i'm overreacting or underreacting or reacting in the wrong way to something, i will realize this when i wake up because  my brain spent the past few hours going over everything and being smart when my emotions were busy sleeping.

so when i wake up and still feel sick to my stomach, when i'm still tightrope walking over a storm of emotions, this must mean that this is the rational way to act about whatever it was that was bothering me before i went to sleep, right? everything else has settled into its rightful place, so that's what this is doing too, right?

also, the fact that i barely slept last night and have a wedding tonight does not make me happy. if you know anything at all about arab weddings, then you'll know that i probably won't be home until around three if im lucky. in the morning, yes. i'm already dreaming of going back to sleep. *yawn*

*I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor

i don't wanna fall asleep

i am dead tired but it is only ten:thirtyfour and i refuse to go to sleep this early. i have come to grips with the fact that i will occasionally sleep at eleven:something because i am getting old and it seems that makes me more tired some days, but ten is just ridiculous.

that is my explanation of why this post may end up being convoluted, confusing, and/or pointless. or my excuse or whatever.

facebook is intimidating me. i started to spend less and less time on it over the past i dunno how long. this might have been in direct relation to the increased number of family members on it that were creating accounts like it was going out of fashion and the random weirdos that insist on adding me as a friend even when i reject them. repeatedly. now, i go on when someone tells me to upload pictures or to occasionally check my wall. because of this, i have a gazillion things to check on that go unchecked because there are just too many of them. here's what my facebook tells me when i go in:

do you see that 69 next to messages? yeah, that's how many messages i still have to read and get back to. wouldnt you avoid it, too?

oh, nephew story because it made me laugh. i had this crossword puzzle book on my bed. it looks a little like this:

except there's over 300 puzzles and the pencil is the yellow-orange color of a number two pencil instead of purple. so my nephew is sitting in my lap and we're watching the wiggles. all of a sudden he gives me a guilty/suspicious/trying to be slick look, then he slowly slides his hand over to the book and tries to pick up the pencil in the picture. (i always take away pencils he gets a hand on.) he cant get it on the first, second, or third try, seeing as it's part of the picture and all and starts to get frustrated. after complaining to me about the "pen" (the way he says pen is hilariously adorable) i show him that it's just a picture. then he tried to act all cool and pretend that he knew it wasnt real by going to touch it and laughing his fake "haha i got you" laugh.

oh, and doesnt the word anonymous remind you of hippopotamus? and doesnt that make you want to laugh just not out loud? no? just me? okay then.

*I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing - Aerosmith