Insomnia

Last night, I was plagued by one of the worse cases of insomnia I've experienced in years. I hardly slept a wink. I keep thinking about the article I'm writing and how much more work I have to on it in the next week, mulling over dissertation-related concerns, worrying about who's going to take care of our menagerie while we're in Germany/Spain for twenty days. Sigh. And Fargo, my dog, would not sit still. He kept pacing around the room, scratching to get out, and making all these loud sighing sounds and smacking his lips. I was furious with him--until I took him for his morning walk and realized the poor guy is sick. I suspect he ate one too many branches in the back yard yesterday. He has an unhealthy tendency to eat any piece of wood smaller than his head. And here I was getting mad at him. I feel like a horrible dog mom. I'm just glad he couldn't understand me when I was cursing his name at 3am this morning. He's normally a very agreeable little creature so I don't know why I failed to realize that it was out of the ordinary for him to act that way. I'll blame it on exhaustion. How could I be so cruel to this goofy but sweet face?

Well, I must turn back to marking students' papers. I'm trying to finish grading their research papers graded by tomorrow afternoon. I marked five yesterday but I still have 11 more to go. Ugh. My brain will be mush by the time I'm finished.