Hypochondria -- or just plain hyper?

I couldn't sleep.

I couldn't remember why I couldn't sleep.

So very sad, I got up and came to the computer to surf the news. Oh, the news. It's soooooo sad. I became positively despondent reading about how Deepthroat's boss thinks he tattled on Nixon for revenge, and then -- the worst part -- Paul Winchell, the man who gave voice to Tigger, died. Oh, the sorrow and woe! This is terrible! What will little children do now that there won't be any more new Tigger movies or songs? I started worrying about the little children, trying to live their lives without Paul Winchell. They'll probably all turn to lives of crime.

I won't have to worry about that, because I'm surely going to croak from all this insomnia, memory loss, depression, and anxiety. But my children will have to deal with it. They remember the days when Tigger had new lines and sang new ditties, and they'll have to deal with the criminal generation that will surely follow in the wake of all this bad, bad news.

Oh! I know. We should crawl into a cave and leave society behind. We can become an unsleeping, depressed band of hermits, dependent only ourselves, our Xanax and Valium, and an occasional field mouse who happens to wander close enough to catch and eat. But wait! What if the field mouse carries a disease? I'm so scared of disease-riddled field mice!!!!!

That's when I read about the mad cow disease that the government covered up. So I surfed over to http://www.mad-cow.org/ and read the Early Warnings:
Insomnia, memory loss, depression, anxiety, withdrawal, fearfulness.

Good heavens! I already have it!!!!!

It's only a matter of time. When my typing becomes wobbly and unbalanced, I trust you worthy blog readers will be kind and slaughter me in a very nice slaughterhouse. Please label my barrel "Bay's Remains," and make sure you include a nice verse about how I was once a nice person before I stopped sleeping and started worrying about a world without Paul Winchell.

And of course, it's a good thing I went to a nice cropping party before I became too mad-cow-infected to get anything done. I had a lovely Sunday afternoon at the gorgeous Maple Grove Inn, scrapping with Jill, Alison, Michelle, Jennifer, and Mary Beth. We drank wine (well, Jill and I did; I'm not sure anyone else had time) and made Artist Trading Cards and laughed a lot. That was all before the insomnia and anxiety proved to be Bovine-CJD.....

Before I forget -- yes, there's probably a correlation between between my affinity for Mary Beth's cracker candy and the entire theme of "bovine" anything in my blog. Moo. Now, stand back before I try to walk around the Internet, reading other people's blogs and dropping cracker candy crumbs all over the 'Net.