Signs that you need a little more sleep on a regular basis.

1. Things sound louder. Even things that, technically, don't make sounds.
2. Your days are extra-swear-y.
3. Your skin hurts a little bit, like, on the edges of things.
4. Are you hallucinating? Or does the sun seem extra knife-y?
5. So much sighing.
6. Extra biting replies, that, if you're wise, you'll file away till morning, or, like, a month from now, so that you can reevaluate whether they were or would have been advisory. (the answer is no.)
7. All the food in the refrigerator looks like it can turn into nothing that resembles a dinner.
8. Extra envy.
9. The normal squalor = instantaneously unbearable.
10. Super-charged crying at the least provocation, like maybe a sentimental bit on a television show? Whoa.

11:53 p.m., the people. Is it bedtime yet?

Extra hours.

I know, that title (^) is entirely misleading, because (wait!) there is no such thing as extra hours. Hours are, like, the very definition of scarcity, the supply being insufficient to meet demand, not enough to go around, and so on. Except we don't have time for these synonym shenanigans! We're wasting the hours, the hours that there are not enough of!

Speaking of wasting hours: I can waste hours with the best of them. I can waste hours on the internet. I can waste hours not grading, for instance. I can waste hours looking at my list until it turns me to stone with its Medusa-like gaze. I can waste hours coming up with metaphors for my list and the semester and so on. But we don't have time for metaphors! We're wasting the hours!

I told the historian this morning that I needed five extra hours in the day, so I would have time to feel my feelings. I was still in bed, under the covers, but I felt gratified that he laughed, and I, in fact, laughed--at my own joke!--but seriously: seriously, if I had five extra hours every day? I would first of all cry for one of those hours. Sometimes you just need to. Would I cry every day? Maybe. Maybe I have a lot of crying to make up for, you know?

If I had four additional hours every day, after the crying, I would send copies of my book to all the people I've promised them to, and a few more, and I would write sweet notes in the book. Because I am sweet like that, and thoughtful, and diligent, especially when I have four extra hours every day, after the crying. I think this would take two hours, or maybe all four, but let's say two, because I have additional plans for those extra two hours.

If I had two extra hours every day, after the crying and the book-sending, I would hands down spend them sleeping. I would sleep two extra hours a day, easy. I could probably do this for a year and maybe by then I would come close to evening up my lifetime sleep deficit. What can I say? I never go to bed.

Okay, I need seven extra hours every day. Because I need two more hours for writing.

Obviously, no extra hours will happen. Hours happen to be on a very strict ration. So I'm just going to have to cry when I should be grading, or--wait!--cry while I'm grading. Write while I'm sleeping. Send my books out when I'm dead. Like that. You know, multi-task. I'm super good at it.

The return of the repressed, or: No Exit.

Shh, don't say anything, but I may be in a hell of recursion, wherein I get sick, sleep a lot, get better (or "better"), sleep but not quite enough, wake up feeling like contagion is lurking in every corner, then start to sneeze and sniffle and my back starts twinging. I'm just saying: can't a girl get up after almost seven hours of sleep, put on a leopard print skirt and boots, go off to work, do the full day, and not come home with the devil to pay?  

Well can't she?

Keep that iced tea coming.

In megastore news:

• heat makes me cranky.
• the historian hooked up the swamp cooler.
• it needs to be replaced.
• we're running it anyway, because
• heat makes me cranky.

Also, who finds it annoying when things you want to read that should be online aren't? Well, I do. I am a full-on digital crank. With extra cranky on the side in the summertime.

Anyways, here's my video essay (who knows why we're getting stripes here? I don't). Hope you're staying cool.

practical cosmogony from lisab on Vimeo.