It’s after one in the morning, and I’m walking through the Haggen store. I think I want Toaster Streudel, and ginger ale, and earplugs. These are the random things you buy when you can’t sleep and there is a 24-hour grocery store just a quarter mile down the road.

There is bad music playing; I wish I could remember what the song is, but I only know it is a contemporary pop number. It has been murdered by having been turned into a soaring piano tune, in the style of the house piano players they have in big department stores, or those TV albums they used to sell in the 1970s. Even though it’s a song I don’t particularly like, I still don’t think it deserves this treatment.

I drove here because I couldn’t sleep. My parents’ house is too hot. My back hurts. I found out tonight that someone in my family is going through really bad stuff, and it will have repercussions perhaps for a lifetime. I know there is nothing I can do to fix it or change it or make it go away. I hurt because I know this. So I am in the grocery store, finding things to eat, which is how I’m going to handle this particularly frustrating sleepless night.

There is an alarm going off at the double doors in the back of the store by the bakery, but the clerks stocking shelves nearby aren’t paying attention. I want to point out the alarm, but figure they could solve that one in their own time. The bakery aisle isn’t going to stock itself, after all.

So I wander. I start in HABA, and get the earplugs. Then cereal, then on to bakery, through bad greeting cards (front: “the human body has 206 bones” back: “and I want to jump every one of yours”. I kid you effing not).

The fake crab (surimi) looks tempting. I pass it up. Two Brown Cow yogurts, strawberry, for the morning. Oh wait, it is morning (vague shout out to “St. Elmo’s Fire” on that line). I look for the hippie food to see if there is decent ginger ale; there is not, so I settle for Vernor’s with high-fructose corn syrup. In the freezer aisle I am drawn to personal pizzas, and choose CBP. The Toaster Streudel is just down the way and I get the last of the raspberry.

Eighteen dollars even at the register. I pick up my one bag and one 12-pack and walk out of the store. I almost start crying at the futility of it all: of my sleeplessness, my pain, and what feels like impotent love for my family members.

What else is there to say? I’m going to watch my parents’ cable TV and pray for sleep. The muscle relaxers haven’t kicked in and I’m starting to think they won’t.

I could blame it all on early menopause. It would be much, much simpler.