The mind is a funny thing at 3 in the morning, when you are lying in bed trying, and failing, to fall back asleep. No matter how sleep deprived you might be, it will still insist on whirling around in a million different directions at the time when you want more than anything for it to shut the hell up already and let you go back to sleep. And I feel like, lately, the whole waking up at 3am and lying in bed with too many thoughts is becoming more than norm than the exception these days. Really, I need my life to become dull for a little while. No more worries about family members having risky sugrical procedures. No more worrying about cats who were lost outside in the cold for two nights and came home sick. No more obsessing about things I cannot control - the current administration's latest idiotic and potentially disasterous decisions, the fate of our country in the grand scheme of the world, global warming, and on and on. Enough of all of these. I need sleep. I am tired of being tired.

It hasn't been all bad, these past few weeks. My dad's latest surgery went very well, since this time it was only the carotid artery they were cutting open instead of his ribcage. We flew up to Washington and spent a wonderful weekend visiting my little sister and my brother-in-law and the world's cutest little six-year-old niece, decorating a Halloween gingerbread house, playing 'soccer' with a balloon ball, getting to feed alpaca, teaching my little sister and my niece to knit. There is a new yarn store opening soon in Davis, and from what I know of the soon-to-be owner, it's going to be awesome. My very first knitting pattern I have ever submitted has been accepted for publication in a webzine (in December, yes I'll post links). The pomegranate tree has produced a massive pile of pomegranates, some of which will be turned into jelly this coming weekend. We got to see Terry Pratchett in Petaluma this past weekend. I discovered how much fun it could be to commute to San Francisco and back by train. All good things, happy things, things that should let me rest easy and sleep through the night.

But the mind is a funny thing. And mine just isn't ready to let go of all the things that are not so good and not so happy, and I do not know how to make it just stop spinning and leave me alone instead of waking me up at 3am and making me lie there instead, unable to do more than rest one hand on the back of our very sick cat and reassure myself over and over that she is still breathing and that she will be okay and the world will be a brighter place if only I could just figure out how to let go.