I Have a Problem.

What I am about to discuss is almost embarrassing for a 30 year old woman to disclose.  I have an unreasonably overactive imagination.  While we can all agree this gives me an interesting and scintillating personality, it wreaks havoc on my sleep.  As soon as it gets dark my mind starts working and my anxiety starts to rise. I obsessively check windows and doors and refuse to go into the basement.  Normally it only makes me crazy when I sleep alone, but recently it is ALL THE TIME.  Something about our recent situation is exacerbating it.  It could be:

1. I am unable to discuss reason number 1.  For information, see here.  But read it fast, and don't say anything out loud.
2. Season 7 of Supernatural, which we just finished.  It focused on opening a door to purgatory.  If you are uncertain about how this relates to reason number 1, you clearly didn't read the supplementary material provided.
3. True Blood Season 4, which focuses on witchcraft and just ended.  Because of reason number 1, we have an unprecedented amount of witchcraft that gets practiced in Victoria.
4. A rash of recent movies that focus on small children being terrorized by haunted houses etc.  I read about one in which a family moves to a new home and creatures are stealing the teeth from a small child's head in the night.  What is WRONG with you Katie Holmes?  How will you sleep at night?  And how do your two sentences of description in People magazine terrorize me so?

Add to these somewhat outlandish concerns some more realistic ones:
1. Every cop show on TV.  Specifically Law and Order SVU which- if I may get up on my soapbox momentarily- serves as a manual to educate every deviant without an imagination on all the possible ways in which to abuse women.
2. The news.  Which is normally bad enough, but as of late has allowed me new neuroses to add to my repertoire.  Now I can obsess about my child being stolen in the middle of the night.  At least this provides some variation from my usual home invasion nightmares.

What is really time-consuming is that I like to be prepared.  If I hear a strange noise, I like to review my escape plans.  What route would I take to escape?  What objects could I use as weapons?  Should I leave the window ajar so that someone could hear me yell?  If I practice in my head enough times, it will be like instinct when a home invasion wakes me in the middle of the night.  For the record, now that I have to divert to get my kid from the back of the house, it seems less and less likely all the time that these routes will actually be successful.  And who puts a room at the back of the house anyways?  It's impossible to guard.  You might as well let your exposed leg dangle over the side of the bed while you're at it.

Last night, as I was laying awake listening for anything untoward, I noticed that I couldn't hear Adrian's breathing.  His sleep breathing is such that it is usually very easy to hear.  OMG.  What if he had a heart attack or something?  A very quiet heart attack?  I instantly started reviewing my safety information.  First things first- which side was the heart on?  After a couple minutes of trying to locate my own heart I was fairly certain it was on the left (is it more alarming that I am a science teacher, or that I've had first aid training?).  Then I tried to remember what to do.  It had recently been changed in order to simplify.  But were you now supposed to do chest compressions and not breathing?  Breathing and not chest compressions?  I was pretty sure it was the compressions.  And I triumphantly remembered you were supposed to do them to the rhythm of 'Saturday Night Fever'.  But how did that song go again?!  Blast!  Adrian would be as good as dead!

I ended up giving him a small kick.  You'll be happy to hear that he was just fine and was sleeping so deeply he was just breathing quietly.  When he woke up this morning I almost wanted to say 'you're alive!  You're welcome.'  Unfortunately he was up at four because Ann has been having nightmares lately, so I kept it to myself.

Which brings me to my next point: Ann has been having nightmares lately.  Hers usually centre around Swiper, the sneaky fox that is aaaaalways swiping Dora's stuff.  Ann does things like wake up kicking away her covers to see her bare feet, screaming about her lost shark shoes (which, as you may remember, are awesome).  Obviously my immediate concern is that she's been possessed by some demon escaped from purgatory.  Or that her room is haunted and giving her nightmares.  In which case we need to move.  But clearly the poor thing has gotten my imagination genetics and is doomed to a lifetime of amazing conversation and plagues of nightmares.  Poor thing.

What is truly remarkable is that we watched Jurassic Park III together a couple of weeks ago and she chooses to have nightmares about an easily-foiled orange fox in a jaunty blue eye mask.  Go figure.

I suppose the obvious answer to both our problems is less TV.  Sigh.