ninanevermore

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What’s it been? Two weeks? More?

I think if I could sleep, I’d be able to write. I want to write. I think about writing every day. But evening rolls around, and I fall into bed and can’t move.

Until 3 AM, that is. That’s when I wake up. The first time. And then at 3:30, or maybe 4. This waking at 30 to 60 minute intervals continues until my alarm goes off and I drag myself into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.

Which lead me to make this declaration: miracles are overrated.

( A Halleluiah I could have lived without; )

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During his bath the other night my 6-year-old son gave me this lesson on modesty and how civilized people should dress when out in public: "My back is not private. Only my willy and my bottom are private. But not my back or my tummy."

He paused. "Still, it’s nice to wear a shirt."


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If I am ever queen of the world, daylight savings will be eliminated. I’m not bitter about it today at this moment; in fact, I’m happy that the time is back to normal. As a person with a somewhat rigid circadian rhythm, the clock and my brain are somewhat in sync again for the next few months. The US Congress has been going to great lengths to see that they are in sync for a shorter and shorter part of the year.

I suppose I could just up and move to Arizona, but all my family and connections are in Texas. Besides, I am a Gulf Coast woman by birth, and I like the lush greenness of my native soil. I love magnolia and live oak trees, and moving someplace where they are not everywhere I look would cause me grief. I would be perfectly content if the government would quit $%&ing with my clock and leave it be.

( Round and round )

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I’ve heard it said that only the good die young. It has occurred to me that this is a mixed blessing in my case. Since this rule protects the mediocre as well as it truly evil, I’m still here and in pretty good health. On the other hand, this leaves me surrounded with a lot of mediocre and bad people who also don’t seem to be going anywhere soon.

*sigh*


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I felt sorry for the job applicant waiting in the lobby when I left for my lunch break today. She seemed nice enough, and was well spoken enough when I told her it would be a few more minutes before the operations manager could see her, but she was wasting her time. She wasn’t going to be hired. I could see that from just looking at her.

( I want to work, but I don’t know how. )

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I have a huge yard, front and back. It has a lot of things growing in it, including trees. I have at least a half dozen varieties of oak, two varieties of pine, a red maple, lots of yaupons, some sweet gums, an ash, peach trees, a pear tree, some Chinese tallow, some creep myrtles, and several things I can’t identify but I’m always willing to learn. On Saturday I saw a new comer growing beside the fence and I wanted to know if it was friend (something pretty that will add to the ambiance of my yard) or foe (something weedy and undesirable), so I did what I always do: I plucked off some leaves and took them in the house so I could research their origin on the computer.

( At least now, I know. )

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Lately it’s occurred to me that my life feels like I am lost in the woods and that I seem to be walking in circles and running into the same landmarks over and over again.

Take my job, for example. Not only do I work with two guys (Frank and Dave) who have the same first names as the two guys I dated before I met my husband, but in the office around the corner from me there is a guy from New York named Mike, just like there was a guy from New York named Mike in the office across from me at Big Death. Frank just hired a new guy to work with Dave, an intense semi-obsessive guy named Ron, like my intense, semi-obsessive kid brother who is also named Ron. The landmarks I recognize from my days at the tech company are the guy named Joe in the front office and the opinionated Cajun woman in down the hall (to be fair, all Cajun women are opinionated). The Entrepreneur is identical to the other entrepreneurs I’ve met, with his love of coffee and his drive constantly in overdrive. I'd know that air of affable ruthlessness anywhere. I’ve met him before wearing a different face and different clothes, but it was definitely him.

Then there is the fact that I’m making the same salary that I made 10 years ago.

Oh, yeah. I’m not moving forward at all. This is one big circle. That clearing is the one I rested last time I came this way. There were berries to eat then, but I stripped them from the vines - at least the ripe and almost ripe ones - so there's nothing to eat there now. I’ve seen that tree up ahead before. Notice how the moss is growing in a pattern that almost looks like a laughing face when you look at it from this distance? It’s the same tree, the same moss. I’m sure of it.



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Monday through Thursday, when I drag my sleepy self out of bed, I always flip the alarm switch on my clock to off and then flip it back to on so it is set to go off for the next morning. I think that one of life’s simple pleasures is waking up on Friday morning, flipping the switch to off and then consciously making a point to leave it there, knowing I don’t have to get up at 5:30 the next morning. I always smile in the darkness of the predawn, knowing I can sleep through the next predawn and wake to brilliant sunshine.

On the other hand, one of life’s major drags is when I forget to do this and wake up early on a Saturday when I don’t have to.


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Which kind of bites, because I really don't have any other game plan right now.



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Yesterday a guy down the hall from me at the office was walking around showing off the souvenir program a friend who works at one of our California locations sent him. He was very proud of it.

Considering the business we are in, of course I am talking about a souvenir funeral program. Farrah Fawcett's funeral program, to be exact. We didn't get Michael, but we did get Farrah. For the most part, it just looked like any other funeral program, except for the photo of the decedent on the front. Most people go for a tasteful head shot of the dearly departed, but the Fawcett family went for this photo:



A starlet to the end, I guess.


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