The Distortion of Sleeplessness

There is nothing more disorienting than teaching English grammar while sleep deprived. All the punctuation slides around and my, very astute, students ask highly nuanced questions about usage. I end up staring at my white board while quickly reasoning through the guidelines which is, in some ways, easier while sleep deprived. All the same, it is surreal.

I'm quickly closing on two weeks without more than two full nights of sleep. For once it's not just my own crazy brain messing with me. It's my cat who starts head butting me in the face starting around 11:30 P.M. I'd be ready to kill him except that I'm becoming quietly convinced that he needs his insulin dose adjusted.

In the meantime, I've been reading. Last night I finished Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why which is a very grim book concerning a teen suicide with an oddly hopeful ending. They turned it into a television series a couple years ago that swept my school and caused quite a bit of hubbub among the adults. However, just like Reagan-Era music censorship, the message was pretty constructive. More on that some time later.

I'm also in the middle of the collected Spider-Ham and a creative writing book. I'm finding both of those slow going.

Everything has gotten slightly surreal. I definitely need more sleep.