3:30

There's something deliriously sweet about being awake at 3:30 a.m.

It's the quiet hum of the refrigerator, reminding you that, despite best attempts, your electricity bill isn't going to lessen any time soon.

It is the stillness of a night that came after a day full of emails and reminders and calls and potty-training accidents and laundry and trying to remember to do all the things I know I will otherwise forget to do.  

It's discovering that on my last sweep-up I neglected under the couch- where Legos go to rest and Melissa and Doug wooden puzzle pieces scatter, almost forgotten.  It's the respite from the smack-on-the-head for forgetting to pay the car insurance which has now lapsed.  It's the dusk settling before dawn welcomes a new day to cross my fingers that there won't be a potty-training accident or an unhappy customer awaiting me.

This is 3:36.

This is the time when I can't sleep many nights.  It's a listlessness that only the Volturi could understand. 

It's the best part of me- the part of me whose mind hums like a stainless steel fridge and gets lost like a colorful Lego.  It's the puzzle piece that is happy to be undiscovered.  It's the me that I am most familiar with. 

This is 3:37, where I can spend too much time researching skincare and school districts that Sayler may or may not someday attend and eat bananas and peanut butter and wonder when I will commit to finding the missing triangle shape from one of Sayler's many wooden puzzles.

It's seriously driving me nuts.

I don't like to lose things or run out of things but at 3:38 a.m. I can let it all go, whereas at 7:30 p.m. I could not.  At 7:30 I was trying to unlock the mystery of where the AAA batteries had gone.  "No, Lloyd," I stammered, "it's impossible.... I don't run out of batteries... I always have batteries... this doesn't make sense... did you move the batteries...?" 

At 7:30 I was baffled, befuddled, mystified and determined to unravel the mystery of where those AAA batteries had gone.  Why were they not in the battery drawer?  It didn't make sense.

But at 3:44...

It's okay.