Too tired to write (so why am I writing?)

I could blame the thunder that made me sit straight up in bed and yell out "What just blew up?!" or I could blame the difficulty of settling back down to sleep after I'd determined that nothing had blown up or I could blame the nightmares about lizards and ants invading my bed or I could blame the Tana French murder mystery novel that wouldn't let go of my hands until close to midnight, but wherever I place the blame, the result is the same: I'm tired.

Not the kind of soul-crushing tiredness that accompanies those massive stacks of papers or the dizzying exhaustion after traveling long distances but the kind of tired that makes me tell my honors students, "Trust me: you don't want me grading those papers today. When my eyeballs start drifting shut, everything looks like an F."

I'm tired enough to put my head down on my desk and take a quick nap before class, even though my desk is about as warm and soft as an Antarctic ice floe.

I'm tired enough to cancel class if I were the type to cancel class, but I'm that annoying professor who kept teaching through chemotherapy, so I didn't cancel this morning's classes but instead powered through them.

But don't come looking for me in my office this afternoon. I intend to keep my eyes open just long enough to drive home, and after that--forget about it.