On Not Sleeping

Last night, in yet another failed attempt to sleep, I got up and accomplished quite a bit on the above piece. I sewed around all the inner edges of the letters, where the intersect and overlap the insert of horizontal fabric. I'm glad I had something to do, but I sure would rather have been asleep, leaving the artwork for day time.
Do I need to tell you that not sleeping sucks? Of course not. I'm tired, I'm not thinking clearly, I've lost some of the edge of my sense of humor, I'm probably not making a whole lot of sense and hell, I worry that my judgement has gone out the window. (Someone stop me if I consider voting for Ted Cruz. That's what lack of sleep can do to you. Snark, snark, snark.

That mug would wake the dead!! My eyes! As Robert Reich cogently pointed out in a 4 point presentation, Ted is even scarier than The Donald.)
So here I am again, at 3:21 in the a.m. wide awake and posting a blog that leaps from my latest art work to weirdo republicans in a single bound. But I guess this beats lying in bed, debating the (un) merits of getting up versus restlessly turning from side to side, trying to convince yourself that you're almost a sleep. Surprise! You're not!
There is that mysterious moment when you feel immersed in pool of almost not-consciousness and you just let go and slip into sleep, if it's going to happen. The "if it's going to happen" is crucial because if it's not happening, you spring back up like, "Hello! I'm actually wide awake!!" I've become really good at that part. Contemplating that moment of suspension and surrender is not helpful because if your twitching monkey brain is busy analyzing the threshold of sleep instead of simply crossing it, you're not sleeping.
So here I am, the only being awake for miles around, hoping to finish up this blog posting so that I can go back to the bedroom and drift off. I know that since Jules the Dog died, my sleep patterns have gone to hell. In the past if I occasionally couldn't sleep, Jules saw it as his duty to keep my company. Now, even not sleeping makes me miss Jules...
I am hoping that the impending (some time mid week?!?!?) arrival of our latest bundle of canine joy will assist in recovering the ability to sleep soundly. But I do need to take into consideration the fact that small puppies who are not house trained need to be taken outside every two or three hours. That'll do wonders for my not sleeping!

Another Stage Complete

Bob and I got the sill installed on the block. That was a big accomplishment. We had to get the wood- in sixteen and twenty foot lengths, no less- and then cover the underneath of the pressure treated wood with this sort of cheesy yellow foam stuff that comes in rolls. It provides a barrier between the concrete block and the wood so that the wood won't rot. But it's one of those products that just doesn't seem like it would do anything, but what on earth could you use in place of it? It would take days to make some kind of barrier. It was cheap, so I guess I shouldn't question it's existence! (I have left over piece of it and will probably use it in an art project).
Anyway, Bob taught me a neat trick for marking where the bolt holes were to be drilled. We lined the board up on the sill, with the bolts sticking up from the concrete, and wham! Bob bashed the wood with a sledge hammer. It created a dent in the board and that's where you drill your hole. Clever.
Then we had to lift the board back on the block and bolt it down. We dodged rain all afternoon, but we finished and it looks nice: ready for the framing to appear.
I was tired last night, what with all the sill-iness (hahaha) of the day,but of course woke up after only an hour or so of sleep and couldn't fall back to sleep. I tossed and turned all night, finally falling asleep somewhere around five this morning. Just in time for the alarm to ring and send me off to work.
So my brain is fried and I am ready to crawl off to bed. Here's what Bob did this evening:

No, he wasn't grilling us some wonderful organic repast. He was burning squash vines that had been harboring these nasty worms. I think I blogged earlier about those awful worms that bored holes into the squash vines, causing the whole plant to wilt and die. You can't compost pestilence like that; you have to burn them. But that led to Bob and I musing on how we haven't cooked out doors even once this season. And the summer seems to be advancing too rapidly to fall...