June 13, 1997
1:35PM EST

Another sleepless night last night.

That's right, I didn't sleep a wink. I lay in bed, hanging between waking and dreaming, never dropping into REM sleep, painfully aware of every small sound in the apartment as the heat in the room slowly grew.

I had the A/C on during the day to cool the bedroom down, but we turn it off at night because it's started rattling again and we haven't called maintenance yet, again, to come fix it. So I was also lying there sweating and tired and unable to sleep.

Yes I am complaining, because I am tired, and cranky and very out of it. You know, like when you get too sleep-deprived and you start hallucinating things out of the corners of your eyes. That's how I feel. I keep seeing things darting about in the rims of my glasses and feeling slightly jumpy about it as if there's this whole second world out there that we don't really know about.

I made really good meatloaf for sabs last night. In fact I started eating some of it, it was that good, I couldn't resist taking a few bites, even though I went out to dinner with my friend Leanne. It was great to catch up with her. I haven't seen her for a couple of months, so we chattered like magpies.

I am constantly hounded by a sense of guilt about not keeping up with my friends better. It's been 3 months since I last saw Leanne, and we live in the same area. It's not that I don't want to spend time with any of my pals, it's just that the effort sometimes gets to be too much, even to just cross from Alexandria to the Washington D.C. metro area.

Sure, you might think, but these are friends, should'nt you be willing to go through hell and high water for them. Yeah. I suppose so. And if anyone called me at midnight sobbing and needing a shoulder, I'd be there in a flash ....

So why is it so difficult to keep up with them on a daily basis?

Does anyone else have this problem?