I'm going to claim sleep deprivation when my bills don't get paid this month

A little over a year ago I went to this wonk-ass doctor who hooked me up to wires and electrodes and a night vision camera in an effort to figure out why I couldn’t sleep. Before that process began, I started off my Quest for Sleep with my generic anti-narcotic doctor. He wasn’t really concerned with the fact that I was hallucinating spiders and bloody beating hearts on my wood floor but was terribly interested in whether or not I was a) depressed or b) depressed and contemplating offing myself. I informed him that I was neither depressed nor depressed with suicidal thoughts. I was fucking pissed and I wanted a nap.

But this time the inability to sleep cannot be blamed on my pantalones loco, my obsessive anxiety or the troll who lives under my bed and pulls my hair out at night. (Note: I’m sure my hair falls out during the day, but staying in one place for eight hours really brings home the total, gut-clenching amount that finds its way to my pillow case. So I’ve stopped blaming it on my rebellious finger-flipping body and have placed the responsibility on my friend the bed troll.) So this time, the no sleeping? Wow. I have a direct culprit that I can blame for my sleepless nights but it turns out that putting a stop to the culprit could be interpreted as animal cruelty and I’m really not a good candidate for jail.

The culprit is Lily, my mildly standoffish cat who is lithe and agile and apparently insane in her membrane. Any time I crawl into bed, day or night, sleep or nap, that bitch ass fur monster finds my antique vanity mirror simply irresistible. And you thought Robert Palmer had the market on that. No. That’s not how this works. That mirror is so irresistible it makes Charlie Sheen’s late 90’s hooker visits look like midnight charity work instead of a skank sex addiction. I’m not sure if it’s a Pavlovian response or a sadistic bend in her kittyality, but I’m about to put an end to this shit. She claws and claws and claws, scraping her paws against the mirror and making it bang against the wall, over and over and over. And over. 2am? And over. 4 am? And over. Time to get up? Here’s Lily, our favorite kitty prisoner, digging her way to freedom through my mirror. This isn’t The Shawshank Redemption. Morgan Freeman is not her best friend. She will not meet up on a Mexican beach in a romantical man reunion. I NEED TO SLEEP.

A Lethal Injection of Christmas Cheer

So you might have noticed that I never actually finished that whole Look At Me I’m Dying story. I should point out that the events of that story transpired way back in August, when the weather was still flaming hot and I still had a (relatively) scar-free body. Now it’s December and I keep traveling to places like Minnesota, where the weather actually defies human logic with its inability to rise above Fucking Freezing (actual scientific name) and I have this newfound ability to predict the weather with my abdominal tingling.

Because I’m looking to finish talking about the events of this year by the time this year actually ends, I need to get on the ball and do a sum up. Here goes.

After my mother showed up and reaffirmed my conviction that mothers can hear you when you scream in your head, my dad rolled in roughly three hours later. Timetable: Before the surgery. Or even the mention of any surgery. Still vomiting/dry heaving into popcorn buckets but had acquired a private room so as to remain uncontaminated by the Poop Bomb lady.

Right before my parents left to go back to my apartment for the night, I had a sudden flash of the empty cigarette box lying on my kitchen table. Not because I smoke in my house but because I periodically empty my purse of it’s residual crap and the empty box(es) take up valuable space that could be utilized by FULL cigarette boxes.

Normal people would have a) told their parents about their smoking habit many years ago, or b) would have been busted by their parents many years ago. But I’m the child who was so secretive I somehow managed to keep my eighth grade boyfriend under wraps until I was twenty-five. No reason. Just for giggles. So imagine what I can do with a little tobacco habit.

We had a very awkward non-conversation where I told my dad that he was going to get in my car and it was going to smell like an ashtray in an old McDonald’s bag. I also told him he was going to need to move the three or four Virginia Slim Ultra Light Menthol boxes (empty) that would be scattered on the driver side floorboard. Then I looked at my mom and told her that there were going to be empty boxes on my kitchen table. Maybe some in my bedroom. You never know when or where the urge to clean out your purse will strike you. I wished them both a good night and acknowledged that I’d been smoking, off and on, for around a decade.

Two days later they cut out my gallbladder (such a hideous name for an organ). I stayed in the hospital an extra three or four days because I kept passing little alien zygotes in my urine. Before I left a urologist wrote me a prescription for Flomax, a drug that I later learned is designed for MEN with PROSTATE TROUBLE. As I am not a man and I do not have prostate troubles, this ended up being a bit of a concern. Especially when my vision started to go a few days later and WAIT! Let’s google this drug on the internet! Side effects include loss of vision (sometimes permanent). That sounds fun.

A week after the surgery I was still weak and nauseated and oh-so-miserable. So my mother took me to the ER, where they gave me more drugs. And I spent another week following the doctor’s regimen of pills until I decided that those people were morons and I stopped everything. Morphine, Phenargran, Xanax, Valium, Odansetron, Sucralfate, Flomax and Lexapro. Done.

Now that the surgery story is complete, we can move on.

Points of Mild Interest:

1) I have a new scar on my forehead from where my coworker accidentally shot me in the head with a plastic spring-loaded airplane. See the following conversation:

Boss: Don’t point that at Robin – you know liberals and their gun control laws…

Coworker: Oh whatever, I’ve got it totally under contro—WHAP!

Me: SON OF A BITCH!

Coworker: Holy crap you’re bleeding!

Me: SON OF A BITCH!

Coworker: I’m so sorry! It just went off!

Me: YOU SHOT ME IN THE HEAD YOU CRAZY REPUBLICAN!

And now I’ve got a thin half-inch raised scar on my forehead just above my right eye. Gives me a jaunty, rogue-ish look.

2.) My hair is falling out. HA HA HOW I WISH I WAS KIDDING. Apparently this year isn’t through shoving its unlubed fist up my ass. According to my doctor, this can happen to people after a “body trauma.” In my case, the “body trauma” would be the ill-received gallbladder surgery. Anyway, I was doing okay with it, laughing with Mother Nature as fistfuls of my frizzy mane ended up swimming down the drain or coming out in my brush until one day I realized that my hair was falling out. Don’t ask me why one day it just punched me in the face like that, how on Monday I was all, ha ha! my hair is falling out! and then on Tuesday I was all ohmygod I think I’m having a heart attack, my hair, it is falling out.

I ended up sending my hair dresser a frantic text message begging for a hair appointment the next day. I needed bangs. Big, long bangs to cover up the now visible thinning at my hairline.

She obliged. I now have bangs.

If I put in my jaw splint and fluff up my bangs a little, I find myself looking at the 11-year-old me. Just so we’re clear, the 11-year-old me was tall and chubby with frizzy permed hair, braces and a bit of a lisp. I occasionally had to wear head gear. I was a sexy beast.