$#@!&*$

Futzing around with the formatting on here, and I seem to have monkeyed it up, without knowing quite how to fix it. Imagine that. On the upside, the 87 shades of blue please me.

Still could not sleep last night. Well, I did eventually - got about 4.5 hours, which would be not too bad on a normal night, but horrible when you've gotten less than ten accumulated for the whole week. Did not add to the list of random things I do, because I was so exhausted and frustrated that I did nothing but lay there and silently scream at the universe. Also a bit of undignified weeping.

There's another reason I can't sleep, and that's because last weekend I caught one (possibly two) men, shining flashlights into my living room windows a little before six in the morning, while still pitch black dark outside. I only caught them because I'm an insomniac and was still awake, and because I chose that very moment to get up and open the indoor wooden shutters on those windows so the light could come in when the sun rose. It was a cool night and all the windows were open in the back and sides of the house to let the breeze in. Once I realized what was happening, I grabbed my .38 special, and raced around from bedroom to bedroom slamming and locking all the windows. That seemed to take forever, and they were gone when I got back to the living room.

It rattled me then, but not half as much as it has in the days since. It took a bit to sink in that I was incredibly lucky that I was awake and happened to choose that very moment to open the shutters. Had I been asleep in my bed, with all those windows open, and my gun in the desk in the living room, I don't know what would have happened.

I live in such a quiet, idyllic little neighborhood. Where until this year I've never worried about leaving windows open or even locking the back door. I'm not stupid or naive, I moved here from a borderline neighborhood in Chicago, and before that a downright ghetto in West Philly. It's just that quiet and safe where I live. Or was, anyway.

So, yes. I will admit to being a little scared to fall asleep now, uneasy in my own home. It's an awful feeling.