Seventh

I am very tired today. LAst night we made the decision to go to bed much earlier than normal. We picked up dinner on the way home, to minimise time spent running around doing stuff, I took down/hung up clean/wet clothes, and we jumped into bed around 8.30.

At which point by brain kicked into high speed.

Two and a half hours later I was still lying there, staring at the celing in the dark with my girlfriend snoring next to me and the cat pawing at my nuts through the quilt in an effort to make me more suited to her comfort needs.

I'm sure we've all spent time thinking about what we would do differently if we had the chance to go back in time, live life over. I've done it from time to time, but have always been firm in the conviction that I wouldn't change a thing - the mistakes I've made in the past have shaped me just as much, some might say more, as my successes have. I have no doubt that my life now could be better, but it could also be a hell of a lot worse.

Try telling that to my subconscious mind last night though. For some reason it grabbed on to the fantasy of me being able to go back in time, kick the 'old me' out of my head and take his place, retaining my current memories and personality. Try as I might, I just couldn't shove this idea out of my head; images and scenarios came unbidden into my mind, on after another in a non-stop torrent that left me feeling more awake than I had been at work all day.
Eventually it became too much. The cat jumped off the bed or something, and my girlfriend partially woke up. I seized the chance to kiss her gently and tell her I couldn't sleep and had to get up, in case she heard me moving and got a fright.

I grabbed a glass of milk - been having nasty heartburn the past few days - and then sat down to play WoW with the sound off. By 1.30 the howling in my head had subsided somewhat, so I crawled back into bed. After another 30 minutes of ceiling investigation, I finally managed to drop off.

Of course, we both slept in this morning.

Yay.