I can’t sleep.

I’ve stared at the ceiling for hours. The fan over our bed has rotated three hundred and sixty three times. Here comes another hot-flash ebbing like high tide at Cape Cod.

Some people count sheep…I count Worry Warts.

Worry Warts are virtual worries that plague you in the wee hours of the morning that you carry with you 24/7 and can’t seem to shake like a pimple on your skin. If they were real, they would be the gruesome skin lesions we visualize, on the noses of witch’s from our childhood fairy tales. They have no sense of humor, riddle you with guilt, and find fault with everything.

I have them because I worry the moldy leftovers in the back of the refrigerator will be eaten before I can toss them out. I worry the back-up system on my car will fail and I’ll have an accident while driving in reverse.

Hope the airbags deploy.

I worry my car is so filthy my neighbors won’t recognize me and will assume there are gypsy’s living at my house and we’ll be kicked out of the homeowners association. I forgot to return a phone call yesterday.

I’m now on the “worst responder” list.

The Mom-Worry Warts are powerful, containing Catholic-Italian guilt.

I’m not Catholic or Italian and I still have them.

My family will be recycling their underwear because I neglected to do laundry. I forgot to have the vacuum fixed and now the dust bunnies are planning an upheaval. There is no lunch money in my youngest daughter’s account, so she had to take her lunch in a Barbie lunch box …she’s sixteen.

She’ll be scarred for life.

Unisom…take me away.

I try to justify to myself that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches constitute a home cooked meal because we ate fast food three nights this week. The dogs are so furry, a shepherd tried to herd them for his flock. I could save time and money if I use them as mops.

I sleep with Darth Vader.

My husband has sleep apnea and he is bed partners with a trendy c-pap machine. His breathing hose might kink, cutting off his air supply and I’ll have to do CPR.
I’ll break his breastbone.

He could get some exotic disease from not cleaning the bacteria from his mask. I worry that he’ll have a nightmare; try to yell out, only to sound like Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants. Worse yet, we could be robbed during the night and the intruders might think he is an alien or a pilot from “Top Gun.”
Even the dogs are reaching REM sleep.

They sleep contorted on their backs, having a puppy dream that never wakes them, but has the opposite affect on me. They are watch dogs by day, but by night, they expect you to protect them from things that go “bump in the night.”
Everyone is counting Z’s but me.

I also suffer from RLS (Restless Leg Syndrome) that I affectionately refer to as Obnoxious Leg Syndrome. They rudely interrupt my sleep. I try to grab some shut eye but my legs are doing the Cha Cha. My aerobic workouts are at night… pacing the house, break dancing and “sweating to the oldies.”

The Worry Warts and my legs have formed a dance team and are auditioning for “Dancing with the Stars.”

I’d do anything for a good night’s sleep…

The good news is there isn’t any room in my bed for bed bugs. The Worry Warts have squatter’s rights.

Terrific, I forgot it is daylight savings this weekend. What moron came up with that idea? I am so sleep deprived now I can’t afford to lose another hour of shut eye. However, that means one less hour for the Worry Warts to gather. Right now it would be a struggle for me to walk and drink coffee.

Now I’m worried I’ll trip while springing forward.