The Christmas Eve that Never Ends

"What a strange title for a blog post in June..." you think to yourself. There is an explanation, I promise.

Since leaving Yale, I have slept relatively terribly. I have ridiculously vivid dreams every night.  At first they were about graduating.  I graduated every night for a week. Then they were this weird middle ground between graduating and starting my summer job.  Then I had a realization that my job started in 10 days and all of my dreams were about my summer job.  I think my mind was really hunting for something to hold on to, since I still had no idea about the Peace Corps and the only solid thing in my life plan was my upcoming summer job.  Then I heard from the Peace Corps that I had been officially invited, but that I needed to wait for my packet of information to find out what country I am going to.  Well, since Friday, all I have been able to dream about is opening that package that will tell me where I am going.  Multiple times, my dog has woken me up RIGHT before I open the package and I am never successful in replanting myself in that dream for any kind of satisfaction. 

The worst night, by far, was last night, because I was told by Mr. Brian Purse that I would probably get it on Wednesday.  It felt like Christmas Eve used to feel when I was a kid.  I was all jittery and excited, and falling asleep felt like the last thing I could do.  I had to stay up and read until my eyes did the "ok, i'm going to get a little sleep while the other one stays open...we'll rotate every 45 seconds" kind of thing. When we got to the "ok, just give me 5 seconds before we switch" I figured it was time to give up and close them and hopefully I would be able to just zonk out.  But, I did the Christmas morning thing where I had dreamt all night about presents (aka getting my package from the Peace Corps) and I woke up at the crack of dawn (aka 6 am).  I don't remember the last time I woke up naturally at 6am...maybe never to be honest. But I managed to get myself back to sleep with the knowledge that the Post Office wasn't open.  When I got up at 8:30, I went straight to the post office to pick up the mail.  Nothing but a new health insurance card from my Dad which, no offense, left me with one of those moments where I figured someone must be screwing with me.  No packet containing the information you are losing sleep over, but don't worry, here's a health insurance card.  Thank you very much for that snarky move, larger cosmic force/higher power.  Poop.

I am hoping that the package comes this afternoon. The Post Office lady said they get stuff in in the afternoons sometimes. I don't want to miss another night of sleep!  It's the Christmas Eve that never ends!!  Really, I just want to know so I can read all about it in the packet, buy travel books and read those, find literature by famous authors and read that, so I can actually have an answer when people ask me where I am going, AND so that I can use this cool resource on the Peace Corps website that streams tv and radio shows from your country so you can listen to and adapt your ear to the accent and grammatical differences in spanish for that country. SO COOL RIGHT? 

Anyway. waitinggggg.....

Oh, another analogy I like that I just thought of... I feel like I'm stuck in that place with dialup, where you know you are about to get the webpage that holds all the information you want, but you are still waiting for the dial-up to connect and it's just making that screechy horrible noise that lasts forever while it tries to connect and load the webpage.  Yeah, I'm stuck in screechy noise land at the moment...and my new enemy has become the USPS. It's not the first time. 

Wish me luck!...with the...waiting...