There’s a new circus in town. It starts at 3 a.m. Whether you want it to, or not. Where the big top is the oversized t-shirt I sleep in – and we don’t have a clown. I hate clowns. Really. I was ruined for life, not by a childhood excursion to the circus, but by the stuffed clown in Poltergeist. That and large, dark, twisty trees too close to the house on stormy nights. Which is why I had them all cut down. Just kidding. I’m not completely batshit crazy. We don’t have any trees near windows.

But we do have poodles! Our poodles do tricks, like strutting the hallway runway in the dark, tap-dancing tapping their fancy nails on the hardwood floor, jumping through imaginary hoops to go outside and pretending to do their business for the coveted Pupperoni reward*. The water-guzzling contest is by far the most exciting.

We also have a cat. Do they even have cats in the circus? Our cat, weighing in at an impressive 16 pounds, performs a desperately hungry falsetto the minute my feet hit the floor for what I thought was the intermission bathroom break.

It all started last night with a blood sugar check that warranted a complete insulin pump set change. At 3 a.m. This always sucks – one, because I will end up fully awake and two, because Veruca will end up fully awake. But it was necessary and the pay-off three hours later was a near-perfect blood sugar. Yet, I found myself wide awake for over an hour, trolling Facebook and pretending not to notice that our senior dog was once again roaming the hallways in search of…. food? Water? The light? There’s a sort of domino effect that occurs on these nights: blood sugar check, cat hears me and thinks it’s chow time, senior dog hears the cat and assumes it’s catfood time! and she’s gonna get some, and younger dog jumps up so she doesn’t miss anything.

So, my island of f*cked up dreams becomes disjointed and nearly nightmarish as I slip in and out of bizarre scenarios where I’m working in the restaurant and there’s never enough staff (this is known as a waitress’s nightmare, and it’s REAL) or someone else is stepping on my toes behind my bar (which, IRL, everyone knows I hate). Or – I ordered a birthday cake for Veruca from Pizza Hut, which I paid for in advance, and they totally screwed it up and the frosting was smeared and sloppy and they actually thought I’d accept it that way. I demanded a refund, after yelling about how shitty their bakery is, and the manager told me I’d have to go online to apply for the refund, but here’s a bottle of Asti Spumante for your trouble. That was a nightmare, because I actually drank it.

And then there was… being Donald’s daughter. Okay, I wasn’t really his daughter, but I was part of “the family” and so he said he was buying a house for me and my kids (no clue where Todd was in all this, which is always disturbing) to live in and I kept telling him no –that I couldn’t accept such a gift from him – because in my mind it’s wrong to accept if I completely wish he’d be wiped from the planet. But he was insistent – no, no, this is gonna be great (you can hear him saying it, can’t you?) – since we will need protection from the masses of reporters, the public, and … assassins (surely). Apparently my mom was his “other” wife and THAT’S how we’re connected… and he needs to keep us all safely tucked away. And all I could think was I don’t want to be associated with him, and what happens when the world finds out? Thankfully, I didn’t have to live through that, since my overactive bladder had better ideas.

I know. Mind – Blown. There are others, too, though much less hallucinatory, that – were I to write about them – would invite psychological analysis from some of my more discerning friends who think I might need an afternoon of introspection with a professional. I’m thinking perhaps no more nachos before bed.

 *No, I do NOT give out Pupperoni rewards in the middle of the night.