by Nancy Graham
OTBKB Guest Writer   
         

My daughter was squirming next to me and when I got back in bed after taking her to the bathroom, I couldn’t get comfortable.

Jack Mercer, as Popeye, was singing the Dredel Song in my head. 

I know that makes no sense but it really keeps you awake, let me tell you.

Then
it was the "Chewing Chewing All Day Long" song from Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory. Danny Elfman really has a way with an earworm.

So many positions to try, and none of them lead to sleep.

The eye and jaw muscles:  so tense and unforgiving!

Crickets.  Sure are loud, aren’t they?

The funny thing is, in the winter, when the crickets are dead, our baseboard heat sounds just like them. 

My husband set up his computer to beep every five seconds before he went to bed.  Wonder why he did that?

He
had something perilously close to a job interview yesterday. Please
cross your fingers, say prayers or throw pennies in fountains for him.
Not forgetting for a moment your internal chant of World Peace, of
course.

Having updated myself, however provisionally, on the
smear campaign against Cindy Sheehan, I’m going to go take a hot bath
with stories by Stephen Dixon.

There goes a garbage truck, accelerating up Pine Street, punctuated every five seconds by a beep. 

OK,
I’m going. But before I go I’ll just post here a word chosen at random
from Webster’s New World Dictionary. It would be better to choose at
random from Random House but I don’t have that one.

Leech 2 n.
[LME lyche, akin to ON lik Du lijk, boltrope IE base *leig-, to bind,
fasten L ligare, to tie] 1 the after edge of a fore-and-aft sail 2
either of the vertical edges of a square sail.

Sample:  Next week my husband and I celebrate nine years of marriage