Let me sleep.

The writer had finally fallen asleep after no less than two hours of twisting the sheets between her ankles and adjusting the pillow multiple times. Her eyelids finally stopped fighting gravity and her mind finally quit racing through the following weeks.

It was sometime around four in the morning. Really too late to be getting to sleep. And far too early to be waking up.

But the gentle hand on her shoulder brought her back up through the dream levels, undoing all of the great effort that it took to get her to sleep in the first place.

She opened her eyes. Slowly. She wasn't sure if she was awake.

"Now?" she asked. So quietly.

"Yes," the Muse gently answered as she brushed hair from the writer's face.

"But I'm so tired," the writer nearly cried. "I don't want to get up."

"But you must," the Muse cooed as she raised a delicate arm in the direction of the computer.

The writer rolled onto her back to look at the ceiling, which she had been staring at before finally sleeping.

"I'd rather rest." But her mind began racing again. And the ideas were popping like kernels of corn inside of her head.

"It's your decision. But I'm here if you need me." The Muse rose from her spot beside the bed, walked over to the writer's chair at the desk, and delicately sat down.

The writer sat up, turned, and placed her feet upon the cold floor. She groggily made her way to the computer and began to write.

And then she woke up.

She had never left the bed, choosing (perhaps not deliberately) to sleep instead of creating.

And the Muse had left her nothing.

The writer prepared for another daytime of searching for ideas, fearing that they would again show up in the night.

"It's just a house."

Cooter Brown and I were in the process of buying a house.

A really cool, funky house surrounded by trees and nice people and gentle hills.

The house needed a lot of love, and we were willing to give that love.

But fate, or whatever it is, intervened and we lost our little house. Days before it was officially ours.

And it feels like a death. It's crushing, really, how badly losing a home feels.

A home that, like I just said, wasn't even ours yet.

I pride myself on not being super materialistic. If my apartment burned down, I'd miss my shoes and my jeans and my computer, but I'd live.

I'd mourn for my iPhone, sure, and I'd be sad having to replace my "[Name of High School] Class of '01" coffee mug with something generic from Target. But I'd live.

And I'll live after losing this house. But this hurts so impossibly much.

I'm no stranger to mental pain. I lost a job when the economy was shit, while I was unmarried and living with a guy. And I was frightful that he'd leave me if he had to support me. I've lost family members and friends, and nearly lost my mind at the same time. I even faced being crippled when my surgery went all wrong and had to deal with the fear that I might not walk right, get in and out of cars easily, or run ever again (I still have a slight limp today, but only a few have noticed).

But losing this house hurt in a new way. It was a failure. I failed. I failed that little house and the future we would share. And now it will sit there and continue to rot away and die.

We dodged a bullet, everyone is saying.

It happened for a reason, we keep hearing.

It wasn't meant to be, people have repeated ad infinitum.

Blessing in disguise? Maybe. Divine intervention? Arrogant to think that my life is that important, but whatever. Fucked up coincidence that happened in the nick of time? Most likely, although that blows, too.

Anyway, I'll just keep on keeping on. And eventually I'll get off of this sad little roller coaster and onto the platform of another home. Hopefully a better home.

Those aren't words.

In the book "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?" by Gary Wolf (which is where the idea for the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" came from), comic characters speak in word bubbles.

Some of the more famous characters, however, suppress their word bubbles and actually speak. Jessica Rabbit is one of these characters.

During one part, she is so distraught and borderline incoherent that garbled mess appears on busted word bubbles over her head. And her speech is unclear and full of blips and bobs and nonsense.

She's mixing the two together and unable to express her feelings.

I feel like that right now. Just thought I'd share.

I want a work proposal.

I've had a work husband. We shared a cube. Ate lunch together often. Bitched about our jobs together.

We were totally married. Just not for real.

And when we both left our jobs, we joked about our splitting up. How we were amicable. And to this day, we remain friends. Now, we call each other "ex work wife" and "ex work husband."

It works.

Having a work husband was great. So great that I would really like another one. But there's one problem ... no one has work proposed to me.

I mean, I have work crushes. There are some great candidates around my office for work husbands. Heck, there are great candidates for work wives, too. I'm not a work homophobe. You could even call me a work bisexual. I'll work marry anyone, really.

But I'm too shy to initiate any work dating.

Oh well. I guess I'll just fill my office with pictures of cats and become the work spinster.

I remember.

The terrorist is dead. And I'm watching the world celebrate on TV and on the Internet and in the streets.

And I remember the famous incident of the towers falling. And I remember watching parts of the world celebrate on TV and on the Internet and even in the streets.

Because parts of the world felt we were evil. And we deserved what we got.

But their celebrations made us even angrier. Their merriment hurt.

And I promised myself that if "justice" were ever served, I wouldn't celebrate. Because no matter how ignorant, how sinister, and how evil a man is, I can't praise his murder.

It's hypocritical.

So I watch my peers raise glasses, hold signs, and cheer for the death of a man who killed millions. Their celebrations no doubt making others angrier. And their merriment hurting.

I will not celebrate. Because I refuse to sink to the level of those who sunk so morally low at our pain.

And I will never publicly cheer the death of anyone. 

After all, "thou shalt not kill" is fairly straightforward.

I'm shamelessly self promoting.

I'm not anywhere near famous or popular, but I have a Facebook fan page (or whatever it's called now).

There's really no point to it, unless you want to know what I really look like. Anonymity is dead, anyways.

Like the Queen of Awesome on Facebook.

I've been reading Kurt Vonnegut Jr. again.

"Too Important"

The Very Important People in the very tall building didn't like taking the stairs. They said the stairs took too long. Their time was far too important to be wasted climbing stairs.

So the Very Important People came up with a plan. They decided to install two elevators into their very tall building. They installed them where the stairs used to be.

Now, they could get from the bottom to the top and from the top to the bottom very quickly. They could get to the very middle very quickly, too. Their very important time wouldn't be wasted on the stairs.

But sometimes, the elevators took a few moments to arrive, meaning the Very Important People had to wait. And they didn't like to wait because their time was far too important to be wasted waiting on elevators.

So the Very Important People came up with a plan. They decided to designate one elevator as UP and the other as DOWN.

The UP elevator could only go up, moving Very Important People higher into the very tall building. The DOWN elevator could only go down, moving Very Important People lower into the very tall building.

This system, according to the collective opinions of the Very Important People, would lesson their waiting time. Because Very Important People needing to go up wouldn't have to wait for an elevator that was too busy taking others down, and visa versa.

It was a brilliant plan. And for 45 seconds, it worked flawlessly.

After 45 seconds, the UP elevator reached the top of the very tall building. After that, it had no way to return to the bottom.

Thirty seconds after that, the DOWN elevator reached the bottom of the very tall building. It then had no way to return to the top.

So the Very Important People remained where they were. And they had no plan. For the elevators were immobile and the stairs were gone.

And all of their time was wasted. Being Very Important didn't seem so important anymore.