sleep... wait, not yet... zzzz

if all goes well (and it will, right? right??), in 24 hours i will be in florida. this means several things to me. #1) i should probably start packing sometime soon. #2) the 55 things on the to-do list for today were probably pretty important, and my lack of having done them will cause me to panic in the morning. #3) or to start panicking in the next half hour or so, which is right about when i will fall asleep. last night i had the brilliant idea that i'd stay up all night cleaning and packing, run all the errands at first light, then go to sleep in the early afternoon, thus ensuring that my recent schedule of waking up at 3pm does not cause me to miss my 2:30pm plane. what happened instead: a rough work shift last night left me (and the rest of the staff) exhausted, too tired even to look for a parking place that didn't involve the nose of my car jutting into the alley. i regularly see people speed down and into this alley, and if it had been a weekend night, i would never have risked it, but i figured i'd be up all night to keep an eye on it (and jot down the license plate # of anyone who hit it), so no worries. after eating dinner, i actually felt sleepy-- despite the fact that i'd been awake for less than nine hours-- so i thought "yeah sure, i'll lay down for a minute, no way in hell will i get any sleep, not now when i actually need it." i left the lights and TV blaring, and all the windows & balcony doors wide open. i've been known to sleep through smoke alarms, but generally i don't hit deep sleep until the three hour mark, and generally not at all when i'm stressed. inexplicably, i was dead to the world at midnight. 2am, i woke up, shocked, and thought this was a good thing, that the catnap would help my plight. then i remembered my car, sprinted to the balcony, saw that it was ok. phew. this morning i watched the local news and learned that there was a car accident mere feet from my window just after midnight. i saw the footage of the police cars & ambulance and thought, huh, that looks like my corner, but it couldn't be. i would've heard it. sure enough, i slept through all the racket. this does not bode well for my packing, nor my flight catching. wish me luck.