Asking, Not For The First Time

Why do I do this to myself?

Both kids off school yest’y, so I couldn’t concentrate worth a tinker’s dam (ah, but what’s your excuse for the last six weeks, then?); loaded up on Diet Coke and misery, up ‘til half-two trying to muscle this piece into shape; then to bed, where—by some ghastly medical consequence of caffeine or exhaustion—I simply could not feel warm.

In flannel sheets, down comforter, fleece and a double-layered Henley, with D asleep beside me giving off her customary 50,000 BTUs, I could feet waves of heat radiating off my body, but my hands and feet stayed frozen, would not thaw. You could have roasted a chicken in those bedclothes, but still I lay awake, shivering.

For two-and-a-half hours.

Which pretty much screws the pooch on the sleep front, when you’ve only got four hours total allotted for that particular task.

And here’s the worst part: I knew this was going to happen. Because it’s happened before. I know how my body reacts to this kind of abuse. But abuse is what it always comes diown to, in the end.

D sez to me this morning, “I don’t know why you like to work this way.” I don’t like it, of course. It’s a sickness.

So why don’t I stop? Why do I keep doing it?