Because

Because* I decided to knit holiday ornaments for my coworkers, I didn't get much sleep Saturday night.

Because I have a shiny new Kindle, I got even less sleep on Saturday night.

Because I didn't sleep on Saturday night, I was tired on Sunday.

Because I was tired on Sunday, I had a lot of caffeine.

I had a lot of caffeine because we were having a family Christmas celebration in South Bend/Elkhart.

Because I wanted to be chipper.

Since I was chipper, with my StreamOfConsciousness Conversations that could put Kerouac to shame, my family laughed and had fun.

Because this is so rare, I drank more sweet tea to keep it up.

But because my grandmother suffers from foot-in-mouth disease, it didn't work.

Because it was snowy, it took us over two hours to get home.

Because I had a tension headache, because my grandmother has foot-in-mouth disease, I had to take medicine.

Since we had nothing to drink in the car but pop with caffeine, we stopped in Warsaw.

Because McDonald's after 10:00 p.m. is scary, Mom wouldn't let me go in alone (isn't that sweet?).

And because she felt bad about leaving Paul at home (because Darcy can't be left by herself all day long because she is just a little dog with a--presumably--little bladder, and because my grandfather also has foot-in-mouth disease and it was safer for Paul to avoid that) Mom had to get him a treat. So we stopped for ten minutes.

Because they put such freaky brick outside the doors, I wiped out a little. A lot. And I pulled my back.

Oh--and because life can be sad sometimes Dad stayed behind in Elkhart.

This wouldn't have been a problem, except that unlike Dad, Mom doesn't use her bumper and high speed to plow through high drifts of snow, nor does she off-road it (well, technically not off-road) by driving the drifted-shut county roads to avoid the elderly, young, and or fearful drivers with whom we share the road.

And because it was dark, I couldn't knit in the car.

Moreover, because it had been dark for a while, I had already lost one needle in the backseat, and feared that it would not return...

But because it was dark, I couldn't see that it was just on top of the carry-out box from Outback, so I could have been knitting the whole time we were opening presents. At least during the awkward times during which Grandma was choking on her foot, it was so far down her throat.

And because I didn't finish the little stocking I was making, I had to finish when I got home (even though it turns out that it wouldn't have mattered, because two of my coworkers won't be in until Wednesday...so the stockings will be sitting on their desks until then)

Because I had to finish them, I didn't go to sleep the second I got home, at 11:00 p.m., otherwise known as Laura's Bedtime.

And you would think that, because I didn't go right to sleep and because I was already sleep-deprived, I would have fallen asleep relatively quickly. Right?

But because I 1. have insomnia 5-7 nights a week and 2. drank caffeine when I usually never touch the stuff (except in the occasional sweet tea at lunch time well before it could cause any harm), I finished steam-blocking the mini-stockings and was still not tired.

Because I am used to insomnia (see above) I have the happy OTC sleepy-time drug, Tylenol PM.

So I took some.

But because I am so unused to caffeine, it didn't work at all. Not even a little.

Still, mentally I was exhausted (see above).

Physically, I was in pain and exhausted (see above).

That being said...I wasn't paying so much attention to the whole sleepy-time rituals.

Because I wasn't paying close attention, I completely forgot to take out my contacts.

This I discovered this morning, when I woke up to my alarm to snap-focus on the first thing I saw. Which happened to be my television.

I realized there was a problem when I could tell the television was a television, and that it had a screen, and that the screen was shiny, and that there were buttons beneath it. Honest to goodness buttons.

Uh oh...

I had wondered at first why my eyes felt glued shut. I thought I'd slept with my face in my heating vent again, or that the glue fairy had come to make life hard for me by sealing my eyelids tightly to my eyes with her magic fixative, or that maybe, just maybe, the lack of sleep had something to do with it.

But the seeing...that meant there were contacts. Or divine interventions. More likely contacts.

And in a move that reminded me of the story I saw on ER, or perhaps it was one Jen told me, or someone else (Adam the Paramedic?) I set about peeling my corneas from my eyes.

It was immensely painful, it made my eyes tear up, and if I hadn't been sure it was a contact I was getting out, I could have sworn that I'd ripped those corneas right off like flaky sunburned skin.

The only other time I'd slept in contacts had been that freaky time when I had the fever that made me pass out in Mr. Cullers' biology class right on my desk, which my uninspired classmates confused for falling asleep due to extreme boredom.

I don't think that fainting really counts.

Why would people sleep in contacts on purpose? Doesn't it hurt them the same way it hurt me? That was serious pain, folks, the kind of pain that comes around once in a great while, that makes you wish you could just pass out like in that biology classroom, to escape the horror of it all.

I can't escape the horror. It's still there. My eyes still feel as dry as the desert sand, and that's after using the Best Eye-Drops of All Time. Those eye drops never fail, and I think that's why they discontinued them, to make me suffer, or possibly because they might just give you cancer. I always worried about that "cooling sensation" they advertised.

But I only have a three-day work week, which might just let me catch up on my sleep, as the little stockings are done.

Because that's a good thing.

*I counted 31, 32 with the title.