Strange Things are Afoot at the Circle K

He pauses to take quick note of his surroundings: the mother-in-law waking herself repeatedly with coughing, someone frantically waving a jingle-toy in the pitch blackness to lure back a cat which sounds clearly more focused on finding a stud, kittens in my own hallway doing their typical early morning Nascar routine...

Tonight I had a lot of strange dreams. Many of them involved falling from airplanes. At first I only had the sensation of dropping, but as the dreams went on, I kept getting closer and closer to the ground. It doesn't help, I suppose, that my conscious mind has seen a lot of sick stuff and has a pretty healthy imagination, as well. I have this habit of continuing dreams in my head even after they should rightfully be over. Having been awake now for awhile, I realize that the dreams, and, more generally, the fitful sleep must have come from what I ate last night. Copious amounts of seafood (local theater fundraiser) including muscles, which I never eat, a fair bit of bread, generous plate of sweets, 3 beers and a white Russian. Honestly, nothing too out of the ordinary except for the muscles. I may be more sensitive to shellfish than I thought. Or, perhaps I'm just having sympathy pains for them, living their tortured free-fall through my digestive tract through my nightmares. Regardless of what is happening in the kumite of my midsection, I've been seriously contemplating coffee before 5am. You know insomnia just won't take the hint and get lost when that happens.

As a surreal bonus, there is a kitten on my lap chirping louder than all the predawn birds outside who seems insistent on helping me finish this post. I will leave his contribution below (minus the receipt from earlier he managed to Control-V/paste onto the screen)...

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--"How Many Lives I Have and Other Stuff" by Barley