magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

Last night, before bed, I made myself a martini. It's not exactly a nightcap sort of drink, but it's what I had the ingredients to make, and I figured that any sort of alcohol would calm my nerves and my mind a touch and maybe help me fall asleep without too much fuss. Of course I was wrong. I got into bed about one in the morning, and was still awake when the glow of daylight started finding its way into the far corner of our apartment that is my bedroom.

After Rob's rooting around in the kitchen (I'm a terribly light sleeper even when I haven't been tossing and turning all night) and leaving for work, I did manage to drift off for a few hours. Dreaming of [ ----- ] and [ ------------------ ].

This insomnia is more than just a matter of being out of work. Although the free time that being out of work affords me leads very directly to the thought processes that in turn lead to the insomnia.

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While I was in the shower, Dan come home to watch an episode of Deep Space Nine before heading back out to work.

'I've got some bad news,' I told him, 'about your iBook. It was sitting on the windowsill, where it has wi-fi internet access. It fell off. And the screen went black.' It was mostly my fault. I hate telling people that I've broken something of theirs. 'The good news is that because it fell off the windowsill, it didn't get soaked in the rain storm yesterday.'

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[ ---------------------------------------------------- ].

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No doubt you've noticed the fact that I've been (markedly) leaving out some details recently. Before this March I think I had only ever consciously censored three things in my journal. One piece of email from a friend of Sam's. One conversation with Cybèle. And a few details in an instant message conversation between Daniel and Marc.F. They were all things that didn't originate with me, and weren't directly about me. In March I hinted at, but left out details about [ ----- ], although when I do finally put the text of the first three months of 2004 online, it will be unedited.

With these more recent omissions, don't think of them as censorship. Just think of them as part of life. We can never know fully what is on the mind of another person. Often we don't even entirely let ourselves in on everything that we are thinking or feeling. There are things we might write down, but never speak aloud. Or things we might talk about, but never commit to paper. Some things we'd rather forget when we look back at years from now.

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I watched the first episodes of the new seasons of Big Brother and The Amazing Race tonight. I know what you're thinking about reality TV. But I figure that if I'm not going to be able to sleep at night, I might as well find other ways to turn my brain off for a few hours during the day. But that's not what this story is about.

Two summers ago, at the end of The Amazing Race I wanted to apply for the show, as a team with Stef. We weren't talking then, but I missed her, and thought that doing something like that together would be an opportunity for us to get back together. I never even brought it up with her though, and so didn't apply, and as it turned out we got back together after a few months anyway.

Last summer we watched The Amazing Race together. Towards the beginning we talked about how we'd be a horrible team. That we'd probably be at each other's throats the whole time, and make mistakes because of it. By the end of the season, one of the last teams was a young, engaged couple, very much like us, and we found ourself identifying with them, even though we were rooting for the married gay couple.

One of this summer's teams is a formerly engaged couple who are trying to work things out. And although they were the first team to be disqualified, they talked about how the one leg of the trip that they did complete brought them closer together, and for me, it brought all this bubbling back up in my mind.