I'm back, baby!

I’m learning that not getting sleep is a hell of a thing. I’ve been the head coach of my swim team for 3 months now, and in that time, I’ve been getting up at 4:45 am. Yes, there is a 4:45 in the morning. Not many people get to experience it, but it’s a glorious time of day. It’s still pitch black outside; you’ve never seen as beautiful a sky as the one that exists at that time in the morning. The blackness has a nice, bleak quality to it. It has the feeling of a vast, never-ending black hole. It’s a black hole that can suck anything into it – like the small amount of lucidity that exists in, say, a swim coach driving to work.

Don’t worry though; I manage to fight that beautiful black hole that begs me to follow it into a highway barrier. I blare horrible dance music in the morning (By the way, this is a trick my swimmers have taught me: dance music can destroy any level of sleepiness that exists). Listening to that kind of music at that time of the morning is like chugging a Monster after getting a massage – any amount of relaxation or feeling of ease is replaced by jittery muscles, fast twitching, and an inability to think about anything for longer than 1 second.  Play this and read these as fast as you can to get the effect:

“Am I driving straight?

“What’s the username for my computer at work?”

“How tall is Yao Ming?”

“It’s just emotions taking me over.”

“Dante Bichette, Dante Bichette, Dante Bichette.”

“Was that car next to me before?”

“Err… err… err.”

“That can’t be my wallet in my back pocket.”

“Dive straight… err… drive straight… drive straight.”

I imagine you get the drift at that point. Well, I’ve managed to make it to work every day, so I guess it’s working. Honestly, the weirdest part about going to work that early is being the first person in the school. I’m a paranoid person (read any of the other posts I’ve written), so I think about all the ways someone could kill me when I’m walking into the school. I keep waiting for an attacker to pop out from behind one of the building walls and come after me. I have my keys between my knuckles though; they’re ready every morning, so don’t try it. It’s probably hard for you to imagine, but it’s also nerve wracking for me to walk into the school when it’s pitch black. I hear weird noises every morning. I assure myself it’s the school settling and not zombies. Not the fast zombies from 28 Days Later at least. Only slow zombies would be inside the school at that time in the morning. The fast ones would never be awake.

Where was I?

Oh, so I had baked chicken from Kroger’s for lunch today. I think it was fried though. Way too greasy to be baked.

[All typos and errors can be blamed on sleep deprivation]