I DON'T need medication....

or at least not the non-recreational kind! This rant is prompted by me being awoken two weekend mornings in a row by my sister-in-law, who lives in Europe. I've been to Europe, they have clocks and watches and most of the Europeans I've met are able to count and thus correctly calculate the time in another country. In our case, if we want to call there we count FORWARDS by eight; if they want to call here, they count BACKWARDS by eight. Sure, their counting is a wee bit tougher, being backwards and all, but they aren't fucktards. I know they can do this shit.

Nevertheless, SIL phones at 8 a.m. Saturday morning. Also, let it be known that I suffer from massive insomnia and I am as protective of my sleep as a mother hyena is of her kill. I often medicate in attempts to: a)recreate, and b) sleep. I sleep recreationally, yeah. Anyway, my choicest sleeping often occurs in the early morning hours since I don't often fall unconscious before 2 a.m. So then we have the medicated, groggy, trans-Atlantic, cross linguistic conversation wherein I try to convey to her that her brother is not home, that he is busy working like a plantation slave to keep his job and thus, I have no clue when he will be home. I also delicately point out that it is 8-fucking a.m. here and that I was sleeping as is the custom in my country. I later inform husband that sister called...early.

Flash forward to Sunday, again, a customary day for sleeping in for non-churchgoing Americans. Again the phone rings promptly at 8 a.m. I knock over the water glass on the nightstand groping blindly for the phone knowing in my dark, malignant heart that it is again my SIL cursing me from abroad. I pick up the phone and sputter "hello" at least a dozen times but no one answers. I know someone is there because I can hear what sounds like interstate rest stop traffic in the background. I know what that sounds like because we just drove from Texas to Florida and we stopped at a lot of interstate rest stops. They're noisy among other things. So I hang up and try valiantly to go back to sleep. No good; it's over. I get up, mop up the nightstand, etc. and the phone rings again. I let the machine get it because I'm pissed and not interested in the trans-Atlantic, cross linguistic cluster fuck conversation. A few minutes later when I listen to the message, again, nothing but the traffic sounds. Then I start thinking that maybe husband has tired of working like a plantation slave and has pulled over on the highway to contemplate throwing himself in front of an 18-wheeler and that maybe he's trying to phone hoping I'll give him a reason to live. Poor sap. Pharmaceuticals and recreational sleep, that's all the advice I have.

So I call him at work; he's fine. I'm telling him about these calls and my dark suspicions that they originate from his family. He says no way because he spoke to his parents that morning and let them know he wouldn't be home; that he would be out working like a plantation slave so that his lazy American wife could sleep recreationally and late. While we're on the phone, the call waiting beeps. I switch over, again, nothing but traffic sounds but, now voices that sound......Greek. Maybe, could be someone being murdered in a rest stop bathroom, I don't know. But again, whoever is originating the call isn't talking. Switch back over to hubby - now I'm kind of freaking as my mom has been having heart trouble, my niece and nephew are teenagers, (i.e., walking hormonal time bombs) dealing with their parents' nasty divorce. I'm envisioning all sorts of doomsday scenarios involving interstate rest stops, dying mothers and runaway teenagers. The call waiting beeps again. Fuuuuuck, this is really starting to piss me off. It's not even 8-fucking-thirty!!!! I click over, hello, hello, hello, at least eight friggin' times and then suddenly, humanity! It's my fucking SIL, just as I suspected!!! All good natured bonhomie because she's 3000-fucking miles away where it's 4 in the afternoon and she's had 12 hours of sleep and is just now waking up and having her cigarettes and coffee - apparently in the middle of traffic, but hey, that's Greece! I'm not ashamed to say I verbally skinned her alive. She seemed to take it well; sometimes that trans-Atlantic, cross-linguistic bullshit works in my favor.

Anyway, my point is that it's normal to get pissed when people do stupid shit to piss you off an disrupt your sleep. When I related this story to my mother, she suggested I needed Zoloft so I wouldn't get "so upset". This from the woman who complains when her customers sit outside and expect waitress service. I stuffed her body in an interstate rest stop bathroom....