Let me preface: I don’t mean to be a comment whore, but if nobody has anything to say about what I’m about to write, I might just can the blog for good and go off to pick roses or something because seriously, I can barely believe it myself.

After making yesterday/today’s post, at 4am, I still didn’t fall asleep or, thankfully, die of hypothermia. Rather, I tossed and turned in the arid desert of my bed for an additional seventy-five minutes, until my restless anguish was compounded by the encroaching stench of eggs. Rotten eggs, to be exact. I’m not talking about the everyday sulfurous odor one might associate with a lit match in the bathroom – this was like, sewage and garbage and all manner of gross seeping through the pipelines and into my room. My nostrils, already raw with dehydration, actually burned from the smell. Misery was laid upon misery, and, in my wretched state, I couldn’t think of what to do.

Sleep, clearly, was no longer an option – even without the gaseous intrusion, I’d reached the point where dozing would do more harm than good – and the nearby Starbucks wouldn’t open for another hour. Without a mighty dose of caffiene I didn’t trust myself to get behind the wheel, so my tried-and-true “vehicle as refuge” strategy kind of hit a wall. And as I lay there, near-comatose, swathed in the stink of West Fargo’s industrial fumes, my mind concocted a most unlikely conclusion:

the exercise room.

So at 5:15am I got up, washed my face, did some stretches and bought a bottle of water, and that is how my first Tweet of February 17th came to read:

“It is 6am. I have barely slept. And I am on a treadmill. Like literally. Right now.”

Again, I don’t want to be one of those people who overuses caps and is all like omg, give me feedback but like honestly. Seriously. This is me, here, the me who routinely sleeps well into the afternoon, the me who DRIVES three blocks to the grocery store, the me who would, at ANY given moment, rather be lounging horizontal, with a glass of wine in one hand and a fistful of salt and vinegar potato chips in the other.