Insomnia Chapter Seventeen Thousand

I'm awake again when I should be asleep. I slept too much during the day yesterday and am now paying for my daytime slumber. I haven't had enough energy even to record anything decent on my TV, so I'm stuck with On Demand and the very limited pickings that are on now. Were it not for Comedy Central there would be positively nothing worth watching, but Comedy Central had the Daily Show during the last half-hour and now The Colbert Report next, so I will not perish from lack of mental stimulation.

My parents do not think I should participate in any Halloween festivities tonight (as in sixteen or so hours from now). I will take their opinions into consideration, but this is very likely my last Halloween here in the Halloween capital of the west coast. One of the freshmen has a wheelchair from the campus health center that he keeps forgetting to take back. I'm not sure why he has it. He's not even sure why he has it. It's probably safe to assume that alcohol is somehow related to how the wheelchair came to be in his possesion, but beyond that I really cannot even speculate. In any event, the guy has offered to push me all over the off-campus community. Since I cannot walk very far, I may take him up on his offer.

My pseduoaunt and pseudouncle went to a costume party tonight. They took their niece [Jared's little sister] with them, as they went as a gypsy couple, and the niece was Baby Maria, the blond gypsy in Greece. Her mother braided her hair into several small braids last night before she put her to bed so it would have almost twenty-four hours to get all messy, then pulled a bit more of the hair out with a crochet hook to make the hairstyle more authentic. Then she dipped the ends of child's braids into diluted brown tempera paint to make it look as though the hair had been dyed brown months ago but that no one had bothered to keep the dye job current. Then the mother gave her a stamp pad, stamps, and paper to play with so her hands would be suitably filthy, and they gave her popsicles to eat, so her face was filthy as well. My pseudoaunt wore a colorful skirt and bare midriff blouse with hair scrunchies from the 90's down her arms. My pseudouncle allowed temporary dye to be put into his hair to darken it, and didn't shave for two days. He supposedly looked the most authentically Roma of all of them.

My pseudoaunt said they stayed a little longer than they had planned to stay, and Jared's little sister, who is staying with them tonight, fell asleep in the car on the way home. My pseudoaunt would not put the little girl to bed in such a state of filth, so my pseudouncle had to hold her head up while pseudoaunt bathed her and scrubbed her hair. They managed to get most of the paint out of her hair and all the filth off her body. She's a very compliant child, and she slept peacefully while they scrubbed her, brushed her teeth, put her pajamas on, and dried her hair. They're planning on having a child fairly soon if Mother Nature goes along with their plan. I certainly hope they aren't harboring any silly delusions about their own child being similarly docile, because the kid they were scrubbing and drying in her sleep is one of a kind; their own child will scream his or her head off if they even attempt such a feat. I know I would have if someone had tried to mess with my sleep at that age. Little kids may not be crazy about the idea of going to sleep, but once they're asleep, you'd best leave them alone unless there's a fire or equally urgent circumstance.

In the few minutes since I began typing this blog, I've made up my mind: I will take in the Halloween revelry [as a spectator]. John and Erin won't like it, but they really need to get lives of their own so that they do not have so much time to obsess over what I'm doing on any given night. I'm eighteen and therefore old enough to think for myself and to make my own decisions, even if they are stupid decisions.

This blog is ended. Go now in peace to love and serve the Lord and to make your own stupid decisions.