Do you remember that song by Matchbox Twenty?  I never liked it all that much, but it takes me back to my Portland years and young motherhood, so it’s redeemed.  Soft rainy days and my first baby in a tiny apartment.  Ah.

It’s 3am and I’m up.  I don’t know why.  I slept a few hours, then my body said, “We’re done!  Time to start the day.”  My body does this to me on occasion, always without my consent.  I wouldn’t mind it so much if my body did other things without my consent, like shrinking itself two pants sizes or plumping up my ever-thinning lips.  But my body seems interested only in rebelling against sleep, not aging.  (Thanks a lot, body.)

I’m sitting in front of my computer like a warm stick of string cheese.  And though my body is awake, my brain is only half so.  That’s the problem with insomnia; you’re up, but you’re not really up.  If I was really up, I could accomplish something important, like cleaning out my fridge or finishing (okay, starting) The Brothers Karamazov.  Either endeavor would break me out of my sleepy trance, so I sit at my computer instead.  What is it about the computer that’s so mesmerizing?  No, mesmerizing implies drama;  I’d call it pacifying.  I don’t know what it is, but I know that my six-year old son is no dummy.  Staring at this screen beats the heck out of thinking.

The other thing I know is, I can’t sleep.  Maybe insomnia is a subconscious sort of “night out” for the desperately trapped middle-aged mom.  If I can’t go anywhere, I can at least stay up.  Kind of like how poor people are always fat.  Eating is the only fun thing they can do.

I’m afraid that last remark may have been offensive.  But that’s okay, because nobody thinks they’re poor or fat, even though we’re all a little of both.  Besides, it’s now 3:37am and I bear no responsibility for what I might write. Kind of the blogger’s version of “The Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight.”

I’m afraid that last remark may have been offensive.  But this post is now officially boring, so like the editors of Cosmo, I will write anything distasteful to snare a few readers into my dark web.  I’m not above selling out.  Kind of like when I used to bring pastries every week to the Sunday School class of sixteen-year olds I was teaching.  Oh please.  The kids knew I was just trying to dress it up.  Why didn’t I just hang a sign on the door that read “This class is too boring to get through without a muffin and please, please, please like me as your teacher!”  Gag-o-rama.  Just one more memory that makes me happy I’m not still in my twenties.

I’m afraid that  last remark may have been offensive to people in their twenties.  Well, I meant it.  You will do many things in your twenties that will make you cringe when you remember them in your thirties.  But you are cuter, leaner, and have thicker hair than I do right now, so don’t worry too much about it.  Beauty trumps ignorance, every time.  Derrick read me a study once which proved, by and large, that most people become only as smart as they need to.  This explains a lot about hot guys.  I, myself, am not especially hot or smart which–based upon this study–means I’m not especially dumb or ugly, either.  I’ve decided to take the news as a compliment.

So as the years march on and I get less cute, lean, and thick-haired, I apparently need to get a lot smarter to compensate.  Which is why I should be reading one of the bazillion unread books in my pile right now instead of boring you with this blog.  But that would take a bit of intellectual investment, unlike writing this post.  This post, as you may have inferred, has required only a set of fingers, a keyboard, and a body temperature of 98.6.  All things considered, I think it turned out pretty well.  Especially since I’m going to close with this quote from The Brothers Karamazov that I’ve obviously googled in an attempt to make you think I’ve read it:

The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.

I’d say this post has been pretty honest and straightforward.  Just like me.  Which, according to Derrick’s study, also means I’m pretty hot.

A square white plastic basket sits on the hope chest in my bedroom as I write.  It vexes me.  Why?

Because it is filled with two new, empty three-ring binders whose destination remains a mystery.  (Home or school? I’ve asked my children repeatedly, but they won’t tell.)  Said basket also contains two wrinkled but clean white pillowcases , eight single socks (partners’ whereabouts unknown, natch), two pairs of matched running socks, and a pair of thick white McDonalds’ socks, begrudgingly purchased when I took my flip-flop wearing son to their Playland one day last summer.

This basket also boasts a slightly graying undershirt, a black notebook of Megan’s (school or home?  she won’t tell), a ziploc baggie holding numerous outdated pictures of my nieces and nephews (do I save/scrapbook/display/toss these darling photos?  Oh, the guilt, the guilt!), and a paper tulip that somehow fluttered away from the colorful bunch that Rachael made me for Mothers Day (do I save/scrapbook/display/toss this darling tulip?  Oh,  the wretched guilt!)  On top of all this lies an old swimsuit that my mom found while cleaning out her hot tub stuff and has been trying to pawn off on me for weeks.  (Previous owner:  unknown.)  It’s too big for Rachael, too small for me, really out of style and–need we say it?–who wants to wear a mysterious stranger’s castoff Lycra?  Think of where it once rubbed against her and will one day rub against me.  Really.

This basket was born of a need to transport various household items from downstairs to upstairs, because heaven forbid I make multiple trips.  I’d toss things in it throughout the day and then take the basket with me whenever I happened to be going upstairs.  This was a big organizational step for me and was working out quite nicely if I do say so myself.  On the basket’s most recent jaunt upstairs, however, something went awry and landed it atop the hope chest by my bed.  It sat there innocently enough until, on another one of my hurry-flurry days, I plopped the clean laundry basket down right beside it.  The contents of the latter basket began spilling over into that of the former but, ever distracted, I did nothing to stop the drainage.

A few days afterward and running late as usual, I dropped the faceless binders on the clean clothes with every intention of sorting it all out later and yet, later, I did nothing.  A week passed, and with a sidelong glance as I blew dry my hair one morning, I witnessed the paper tulip fall softly away from its sisters in the neighboring vase.  It fluttered and landed on the peak of clean laundry that now rested in the white basket, and yet?  I did nothing.  Shortly thereafter I was careless–but conscious–as I tossed the family pictures and used-up swimsuit onto the monstrous hump, and yet.  I did nothing.  I just walked by each day, watching The Pile grow and wondering how I would ever develop the organizational skills needed to rescue all of those lost children.  They had been abandoned to my negligence, and I could blame no one but myself.  This is what vexed me most of all.

And so.  Today, I look down at the basket with a mixture of pity and revulsion, and it looks back up at me with twenty pairs of vacant eyes, hungry for a home.  And I speculate:  in the time spent writing this post, do you think I could have cleaned out that basket?  Hmm.  I would have to say no.  No, certainly not.  Certainly discussing the finer points of this problem was much more productive than solving it.

In fact, I believe that emptying this basket has evolved into a tightly twisted logistical knot  that will take at least an entire Saturday to unravel.  I’d better look at it and think about it and write about it some more.  Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, my friends.  It takes two weeks for payday to roll around, nine months to birth a baby, and three hundred sixty-four days for Christmas to come back.  Who can put a deadline on Emptying the Square White Basket?  Please.  Don’t rush me.

So I finally found my wedding ring.  Yesterday, as I was putting laundry away, it peeked up at me through a fuzzball on the carpeted closet floor.  Following the bright little sparkle with my eyes, I knelt down and captured it with that rush of relief one always feels upon recovering a lost item.  (I am keenly familiar with this feeling, as Losing Items is one of my special talents.)

As the day wore on and my initial relief passed, I tried to put a finger on my feelings.  I am happy.  No really, I am.  I suppose this means that I will not be getting a new wedding ring after all.  I suppose this means that I will not have to endure viewing row after row of glass-encased diamonds, deciding which size and sparkle suits my needs best.  (You know how hard decisions are for me.  Who needs it?)

I suppose this means Derrick won’t have to take out a loan to prove his enduring love to me and that I won’t have to wag my left hand up and down, up and down to say hi to all the girlfriends I run into at Walmart.  I suppose this means that I can prove to myself, once again, that I am not greedy and materialistic.  No really, I am not.

Such a relief.  Who needs a carat when you’ve got .3?  Who needs the latest designs and settings when you’ve got the best 1995 had to offer?  Who needs the diamond that your husband can buy you now when you’ve got the diamond he could afford as a junior in college?  Really, I’m too busy to be bothered.

And so happy to have my old ring back.  No really.  I am.