The Thingy in my Pants

I have diagnosed myself again. My lack of sleep this week is job-related. It took a while to figure this out because it's completely different than my job-related lack of sleep when my previous job went south. (Well, not completely, since they both result in a lack of sleep, and since my previous job was in The South, it couldn't have gone much farther, but I digress.)

In my previous job, I fell asleep thinking about work, woke up in the middle of the night thinking about work, and woke in the morning thinking about work. Now, I'm having trouble falling asleep, waking up two hours before my alarm clock, and having trouble falling back asleep -- and none of it involves thinking about work.

This morning, I woke up just a half hour before the alarm clock because of a nightmare. I, as my adult self, had been doing something with the children in my elementary school. Then I was in the backyard of the neighbor next door to the house where I grew up. I took refuge in an unfinished building in their backyard, along with a man, a woman, and a young boy. We were trapped by a poisonous snake with a black head and forepart, a narrow yellow/gold band, and a blue-gray rest of the body. It wasn't a cobra, but it spoke to us like the snake in Riki-Tiki-Tavi. At some point, a small dog that was with us went outside to fight the snake and got wrapped in its coils, but the snake let it go. It wanted humans.

The man with me used an easy reach to put the snake in an old soup can, but it escaped. He managed to trap it again, and throw the can and snake behind the building. I grabbed the child and ducked down to get out of the building. (Did I mention that the building I called "unfinished" had walls that were 7/8 complete from the top down but were still open at the bottom?) That's when I heard a distinctive rattle. I swore loudly, heedless of holding a young, impressionable child in my arms, and stood back up. I also woke myself up because no dream involving a second poisonous snake could possibly get better. (Well, unless you're a snake.)

It was just half an hour before my alarm was set to go off, so I figured I could go into work early. I'm not doing much these days, mainly moving papers from one side of my desk to the other. I also had to use a memory stick, to transfer files from one computer to another, but I didn't want to drop it or misplace it with the papers, so I put it in my pocket and reminded myself about the thingy in my pants.

I realized that, if I'm having trouble remembering the thingy in my pants, you'd better check me into an assisted living facility. Except that I wouldn't want to leave my kick-ass condo, so send me a nurse. Any one will do. After all, if I can't remember the thingy in my pants, it's not like I'd be able to use it on a cute nurse, would I?