Ever have one of those nights?

Where just before 8 p.m. you feel a nasty headache coming on and you know that they only way to get rid of it is to take some Excedrin? But you also know that you are chancing being kept awake all night if you take it. Then you go ahead and take that chance because you know if you don't you'll have a raging headache and won't be able to sleep anyway?

Then at 8:30 after the kids are all in bead you are reading The Maze Runner and you only have a few chapters left, when you look down on the living room floor and your husband is fast asleep? You then decide to wake him up so he can actually get some decent sleep in bed and you can finish reading your book there as well.

You finish reading your book around 10:30

(and grind your teeth and be very thankful

that your name is on a waiting list

at the library for the

Scorch Trials.

Even if you are number 16 on that list),

turn out the light and proceed to try to sleep.

But your brain won't shut off because of the afore mentioned Excedrin? It then proceeds to go over everything that needs to be done for the Halloween party that you are in charge of next Saturday and every, other minute detail that needs to be done between now and next Sunday?

Then all of the sudden it turns on you.

Viciously.

Bringing you a memory that causes you to shrivel up and die a little bit, all over again?

You know the one. The one where you have been roped into being a contestant for FFA Sweetheart, and you aren't even a member of the FFA?

Go ahead, laugh. I'll wait.

Finished? Let's move on shall we?

As part of this "Sweetheart" deal you have to rope a little metal rocking steer

(which you suck at),

stack bales of hay

(which you kick donkey at),

eat a pie in a pie eating contest

(where the pie is still mostly frozen and

pretty much all of the whipped cream

on the top of the pie just

gets shoved up your nose so you

all you can smell for the next week

is sour milk)

and be in a "evening gown" type competition where you wear an awesome iridescent light blue bubble skirt type of a dress, which was your prom dress the year before with a few alterations thrown in.

(What? It was the 80's. Bubble skirts were supposedly "fashionable".

Didn't you read Seventeen magazine??)

But that's not all....no, that's not all by half.

You all so have to stand up in front of the whole student body, in an amazingly horrid sweater

(that you borrowed from your older sister )

that has a bear hugging a heart... embroidered ... on the front

(which at the time you adored and chose to wear.

I know.

I KNOW!),

with a lunch for two. And then you and your homemade fried chicken basket get auctioned off to the highest bidder who, supposedly, wants to eat lunch with you?

But only, like, two people bid on your lunch and you can't even see who it is because of the stupid lights that are beating down on you on that stage in the auditorium. And then when you show up at the appointed meeting place for lunch no one is there to eat that lunch with you? And there is a teacher there to witness your humiliation?

So in your mind you make yourself believe that it's because the person who bid on your lunch is afraid of your boyfriend who graduated last year.

(Whom you have now broken up with)

You imagine that said ex-boyfriend has got "the message" out that anyone who had lunch with you would "pay" more than just the money that they bid. Even though said ex-boyfriend would do nothing of the sort and prolly couldn't even back up those words if he did.

With those thoughts entrenched in your head you give the teacher in the room a half smile and a shrug of the shoulders, pick up your homemade fried chicken lunch and go off and eat it all by your lonesome self?

You then have a knock down, drag out, fight with your mind to let go of that lovely, little gem of a memory telling it

"That was over 20 years ago!!!

Let.

It.

Go!"

Blessedly it does.

Then it decides to hop on the bullet train and zoom ahead to thinking of the two Christmas parties that you are in charge of in December. Amazingly

(and thankfully)

some pretty fabulous ideas

(for at least one of the parties)

decide to board that train, so at 1:17 a.m. you quietly get out of bed, so as not to wake your husband, and find a pad of paper so you can jot these ideas down because if you don't they will be lost in that maze of gray matter by morning.

Then you decide that if you go and try to lay back down it's not going to much good

(and you are worried that the brain

will suck you back into that

ever so horrid memory of 20 odd years ago)

so you pull up Facebook and read through the over 300 "most recent" news items that are there because you haven't been on since early Sunday morning. But you don't comment you just read.

Then you open up the pictures of the zoo that you took when you and your family went there on Friday, fiddle with a few of the pictures and then decide at around 2:10 a.m. or so that you really need to try and get some sleep. You go and lay down and thankfully your brain has slowed up enough for you to finally be able to drop off about 30 minutes or so later.

Your husband then gets up at about 3:30 a.m to do his early morning yoga practice and you hear him in the other room doing his breathing and know that you are going to have to get up in a little while for family prayers and a new day will begin?

Ever have one of those nights?

Yeah?

Me too.