While You Were Sleeping

(I was not.)

It's almost 1am. Hot. My skin is sticky in a non-sexy way. The thought of sex makes me feel like I'm going to suffocate. What is wrong with me? Isn't hot humid air supposed to get us all sexed up and ready for fun in the sack? I can't stand the feeling of hot sticky skin on mine. Warm skin is like an airless blanket. When I sleep I prefer to be somewhat cold. Does this mean I'm an awful bloodless woman? I like windows open, cold air flowing in, my skin brushed with sleet.

This was day four in the triple digits. We were all cranky and ready to implode. Others explode, I implode. Suddenly I'm remembering dangerous forays to the park across the street from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in the middle of the AM, when the night crawlers are out. I would go to be alone. To think. To get air. I wish I could do that right now. San Francisco may have the very most ideal temperature of all cities for me. Which wouldn't be all that strange since I was born there. In a hospital that no longer exists.

I wonder who's awake and who's asleep, dreaming of hunky firemen? Another hemisphere is opening their eyes now. There are so many people on this planet already I'm wondering where we'll keep all the new ones getting born? I can feel everyone crowding right now. Yes, I know, I'm crazy. I have a medical file to prove it.

It's too hot to sleep. Sometimes when I can't sleep I worry that I will never sleep again. Not sleeping is one of my greatest fears. It's part of why I stay awake drinking into the wee hours. If I prolong the effort I will be so tired and full of soporific alcohol that I will not be able to help myself but to sleep. I will crash down into unconsciousness like I have a concussion.

Cold showers in the heat are awesome. I might have to take one in a little while. Normally I'm not all that fond of cold wet water on my skin. Amanda suggested it a couple of posts ago and I tried it and DAMN! Feels so good.

I am a winter flower. Calling myself a flower is my personal little joke. I'm so large that describing myself as anything delicate is ridiculous. No, I'm not dissing myself. Just being honest. If you could see my soul I think you'd see that no matter what shell I wear my spirit is robed in gossamer fabric and my love is complete. Love for this damned planet, its damned people, and all the damned animals on it.


Rarely has a body and a spirit been so mismatched. I have constantly blamed it on breaking my hip since that's when I metamorphosed from a stout but normal sized person to a very large person. The past two weeks my hip has been hurting me again. It's an easy excuse. It never really leaves me. I long to stretch my legs in a jog. To make my body burn with the effort of motion- but the consequent pain in my hip keeps me still. I'm not allowed to jog. Doctor's orders. Ever again. I long to take off in lengthy sinuous strides. Put some miles between myself and the present.

But that's all just excuse. It's harder to pretend at this time in the morning.

I don't like being up right now. In the quiet of night I can hear everything. I can hear you breathing right now. You think I can't, you think I'm speaking metaphorically, or poetically.

Have you read my poetry?

Then erase such thoughts from your brain. I hear you right now. I am almost a guest in your dreams. That's how loud your spirit exhales.

Thunder is here. I've seen the lightening. Heard the rumbling. I thought at first it was some kind of late night mud monster truck demolition derby. We have things like that around here. But it lit up the sky and made me think of the apocalypse. The one I don't believe in.

I think you're dreaming of Tom Selleck right now and you don't want anyone to know it.

Lightening again.

There was a time when I felt completely connected with the forces that be. When I could close my eyes and almost know what was coming. I could feel it out there. Not like a moving Ouija board but like opaque messages from the stars. Years ago a quiet fell down on me and clouded my vision, my hearing.

I was listening to music but now I'm listening to the thunder and lightening. There's no rain. Yet.

Ah. Here it is. I sat outside to watch the sky light up and thunder. I actually saw lightning. My thought was "Oh god, why didn't I take out life insurance on myself so that if it takes me Philip and Max can keep on going?"

I'm drinking the very last drops of my Santa Rosa plum liqueur, made three years ago. It is so rich and full of plum flavor. Incredible!

Am I ready for bed?

I don't know. I want to know what's coming. I want to know, before I go to sleep if we will lose everything or find a way to keep it. Can someone please tell me that? I love my life here in this house. I love the raised beds I've built, the roses I've planted, my funky cool kitchen, my chickens, my kittens, my dog, my family, my town, my part time job, my marriage, and I really like breathing.

Can I please stay here forever? Can I please not lose anything else for a long time? Can I please keep us from going under? I'm so tired of worry. I'm so tired of anxiety. I'm so tired of depression and loss. I'm tired of my own devices, tired of heat, tired of hanging by a thread at the neck.

I used to cast runes. I used to believe. I used to feel it. The churning of the earth and the answers hidden in the rubble.

I know, you'd like to know if I'm certifiable. Yes, and no.

Remember, I can hear you. Right now.

The wonderful thing is this cooler weather the thunder brings. Brushes of air not brought to us by the furnaces of hell. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to dream. I wonder if you'll be able to hear me too?

Listen.

Like a mockingbird I will sound an awfully lot like you. Like a reflection. Like a mirror turned light in the dark.

Listen.

Is your sky in thunder too?

Sleep.

The Breakfast of Champions

Max recently asked me if he could get Lucky Charms cereal. I think Lucky Charms cereal belongs to a class of food in which you will also recognize sparkling greyish-white mirror lines of meth, cocaine, and crack. The real breakfast of champions!

I should know. I have a fairly checkered past. I can prove it by having dated a very short dread-locked Australian man who alarmed me dreadfully when stripped down to his briefs at which point I wondered what the hell I saw in him in the first place and the only answer I could conjure up was that he had looked quite fascinating in the strobe lights at the Underground Club. This was the only boyfriend I ever "cheated" on. I say "cheated" because we never actually decided we were going out for real. I confess that I was shocked when he expressed unhappiness at having found out I went out with another guy.

Considering that I didn't put out for him I figured he'd be just as happy being set free. Even though he was never really going out with me. Men are a fucking mystery. I am still frightened by the memory of him in his skivvies.

Just for the record, and because I'd like to get this off my chest for posterity's sake- I had a total of fourteen boyfriends before I married Philip. I have only slept with four men. So you can see that I frustrated a lot of young men's fancies and drove a lot of balls to that quaint state of blueness so easily fixed by heartier gals than myself. I didn't tease men to be an ice queen nor did I think I was some precious china doll waiting for some perfect moment.

You know I wasn't waiting for God's approval either.

The ugly truth is that sex seemed like a serious invasion of my personal space and there are few things in life I have come to value quite as seriously as my personal space. It was one of the very first things I remember finding value in.

What interests me more than my early sex life is my history of drugs. Compared to people like Bill Clinton who never inhaled, I am like an old rock star. Compared to my immediate family I am like a pure unpoisoned angel of abstinence. What's deeply ironic is that while most of my immediate family were unabashed potheads, they seemed to have worried that I might have become a speed-freak. We discuss these things fairly freely amongst ourselves and there is no shame in having had, at any point, a relationship with narcotics, always supposing it isn't running us ragged or inspiring us to live a life of crime. I was surprised, never the less, to find that the general view at one time was that I was over the edge for speed.

It's true that I had more than my share of the stuff. Yet I have to say that most of the time I did it was either to help me pull all nighters in which I drafted patterns for school into the wee hours or because my friends had it. There was never a point at which I longed for it or sought it out because my blood ached. The only two narcotics I have ever had a weakness for are cigarettes and beer.

It is my belief that Lucky Charms cereal is a gateway drug.

First it's Lucky Charms with those brightly colored stiff weird "marshmallows" and the next thing you know you're dusting it with crack powder.

Max and his friend seemed to have had a disagreement about the damage capability of a nuclear missile. So Max wanted to know if you could blow up a car with one. So I explained that you could blow up a whole city with one and kill lots of people beyond the city as well through the heat and the acid rain and the awful fallout. It reminded me what terrible beings we humans can be. My boy is a warrior and he wants to know about these things. I am more like a monk or a Buddhist. It makes me wonder how a woman can give birth to a weapon wielding warrior? Surely that must be the eighth wonder of the world? It's weird enough that my body knows how to make a perfect penis in my womb without asking me to think about it at all. We can give birth to our opposites and, I suppose, our enemies. What torture it must be to stand across the line from her own son in war or political division.

Just like the torture it must be to see a daughter sold off to a country to quell rebellion.

He's going to remember that I wouldn't buy him Lucky Charms. I should know. My mom wouldn't buy them for me either. She might have agreed to buy me hemp cereal but there was no way she was going to pollute my body with kid-crack.

It is very late at night. I both love and hate this hour. I love it because so few people are awake. It's quiet out there in my hemisphere. When every one's awake I can hear them all. All the time. Loud like a thousand minor birds. I don't want to go to bed because it's the only time of day that no one needs anything from me. Husband sleeps. Child sleeps. I sit and ramble to self in the dark quiet hours. I have hated this time also because I have woken up so often at this time and been the only one awake in my unfading nightmare. I still have them. But they are exponentially worse when you have had very little sleep in many weeks. I hate being awake at this time when woken from a nightmare.

I am stealing some one's wireless connection. The only place in the house where we can steal the connection is at the top of the stairs. So that is where I am sitting. Most of you are asleep right now. Or awake, probably doing things I don't need to know about. Except Riana and Jo. They are probably waking up now. For them this is a time of crisp eastern light.

I like that our days cross at strange hours.

I would like lullabies to be sung to me at all times. Would you like fairy lights to be lit and a lilting song to be sung to you in your mother tongue with love, ripe with wishes and that peculiar warmth that only your mother's eyes and arms can impart?

Philip asked me if my recent nightmares have included any of the usual lions or leopards. My nightmares have nearly always featured really dubious bathroom situations or circling lions of which I am quite fearful. Or tests I haven't studied for. Or serial killers. A lot of serial killers. And hunts for me.

The nightmares have been different. But I can't tell what that means.

Right at this minute I am feeling all of your spirits out there. I am blowing kisses into your dreams. I am blowing peaceful thoughts across your brow.

A Gift More Precious Than Myrrh

Andrea, from California, read that I was having a hankering for kiwis and like a guardian angel sent to protect me from scurvy-she sent me a bag of them! Thank you Andrea for your thoughtfulness!!! This is better than anything from Harry and David's. Better than the gifts from the magi. Seriously...oh and I ate one yesterday and I have to say that I immediately felt healthier inside for having eaten such a bright and tangy fruit. It was such heaven!

Even though Max made lots of fake retching noises while I ate it since he can't understand how come anyone would eat a green fruit with black seeds that's covered with hair. Kiwi hair looks a lot like tarantula hair. I had been thinking I wanted kiwis to put on a tart but I'm afraid that these are so good by themselves that they must be enjoyed entirely for their own sake. Now I am even more curious to find out if the kiwis in Dundee are any good. Maybe last year's batch that Lisa E. picked weren't ready to be ripened off the vine? If they can grow well here, then I must grow them. Citrus certainly doesn't do well here, but I think Christmas kiwis sound even better than the traditional Christmas orange.

One thing I love about the PNW are the incredible cloud formations and sunsets we get. The sky is a constant source of beauty around here.

Gruel is what I had for dinner. Even though my stomach felt fully recovered enough to spend the day cleaning the house, no savory food sounded really good. I only craved foods I can't have because of my stupid local challenge... like steamed vegetables on cous cous with feta cheese and vinaigrette. I haven't learned to make feta yet so I can't eat any. As I scoured the shelves for something suitable to eat I suddenly got the urge to eat oatmeal. With lots of brown sugar and a little milk. A meal otherwise known as PORRIDGE. But I like to say GRUEL. GRUEL. Yum.

This is what my kitchen looks like when I am sick for one day. You should have seen the rest of the house! No, you shouldn't. It would hurt your eyes. It still isn't totally clean but I blasted Madonna on top volume and swept and vacuumed and put crap away. Our house is one big crap storage facility.

Last night was a little slice of hell. I read a book by Patricia Cornwell which was brutal and nasty and scary and so even though it was on the late side when I finished it I had to detox my head with something light and fluffy. So I watched some Friends reruns, as I often do, until quite late. The lights didn't really go out until about 1:10 am. Within ten minutes the cat needed to be let out of Max's room. He bangs on the door to get our attention. Max doesn't like to sleep without the cat. So within another ten minutes Max was up and upset that the cat was gone. He wanted the cat back.

I explained that the cat just left and probably had to spend some quality time peeing in the cold outdoors and that Max needed to go back to bed. But Max said he was going to sleep with us instead. (Which is an impossibility because we don't all fit on our bed at the same time.) I told him he was going to get back in his own bed. This is where things got to be really fun. He wouldn't budge out of the hallway. So I pushed him into his room and he starts bawling.

The house makes noises. Where's the cat? He's scared. He wants to sleep with us with all the lights on for the rest of his life. I have little patience because it is now 1:20 am and I'm really ready for sleep. Max is really bawling his head off. Philip stumbles out of bed to retrieve the cat which makes me want to yell at him because I just let the cat out and you can't force the cat to stay in Max's room and I know that the second all the lights are out the cat will be banging on the door again and it will be ME, not Philip, who will hear it and have to go let him out again. Which will probably wake the kid again.

When Philip returns with the unhappy cat Max's nose is gushing. It's been a while since this has happened (like a whole month!), thankfully, but it means we're caught off guard so blood gets all over his comforter cover (and probably the comforter underneath it too) and all over his hands which freaks him out. Just like he used to freak out when jam would drip on his hands when he ate PBandJ sandwiches when he was two. Jam on his hands always made him freak out. Philip is impatient too because Max isn't doing a good job of staunching the blood and is blaming Philip for it. Philip is not great in emergencies or any situation that wakes him up or keeps him from his sleep.

I'm not fond of being kept from my sleep either. Finally I get Max to stop crying by making him mad. The nose has stopped bleeding. But there's still the question of the cat and Max's refusal to sleep without him. I give Max a choice: sleep with the dog in the guest bed with the lights OUT (because it's next to our bedroom and I want to sleep for god's sake!!) or sleep in your own room with the lights on. He chooses his room. By now I have begun to feel for my kid. I know what it's like to be terrified to sleep. I've been Max my whole life. Where's my fucking compassion? I explain all the noises he hears in the house. He is not really convinced.

I finally crawl back into bed by 1:30 am. Within two minutes the dog is whining. And I can't sleep. Can't sleep because now I'm not the tiniest bit tired. By the time I start drifting off to sleep the dog jumps on the bed and I sort-of-sleep the rest of the night in a weird contorted position. With the blankets half off because of the stupid dog and me being too tired to try to fight it. I would have crawled off to the guest bed but there's no comforter on it because Max barfed on the extra comforter this week and I am in the middle of washing it for a second time.

By 5:30 am Max is up again. But this time he's up for the day. I tell him to go back to his room and be quiet. By 6 am the animals all want feeding. Philip does it. But then the dog wants out. I let her out. I crawl my sorry ass into bed just in time to be crowded by the dog again and hounded by the child who wants Dad to get up already. Dad is really grumpy. I am always annoyed by him being so grumpy in the morning because he attempts to sleep in as though it's his sacred right. And he yells at everyone when we bug him too much. Which makes me even more mad. He'll say he's going to get up really soon and he'll still be in bed an hour later, mad that we are expecting him to get up because he said he was getting up. Mornings can be real hell around here.

I can see the writing on the wall. There's no point in trying to sleep anymore. I get up by 7 am after my night of hell and no sleep. I drink coffee and read blogs. While Philip stays in bed.

This week-end is all spoken for and I can't see how I'm going to get any of the sewing work done that needs doing. Ah well. At least I don't feel like throwing up and I have kiwis.

Driving In My Sleep

I am just including this picture as a kind of distraction from the crazy talk that follows.

I've been driving in my dreams again.* I actually own a car in my dreams. It's a vintage tomato colored convertible of uncertain make. It shows up periodically. Usually I'll be desperately in need of a way to get to some of those classes I'm always taking and missing and I suddenly remember that I have this car.

Last night I didn't have that car. I was in a giant house having a birthday party to which most of the cast of friends were talking to me as though we were old buddies. I was embarrassed to be the center of attention in a huge group of people, as I am in real life. At some point we all went across the street to sit around and watch a kid's soccer game. One of our actual neighbor's children was playing in it. But not Max.

Philip and I had to go get something so we left in a van. At some point I realized that no one was driving it and in a panic tried to climb over the back seat to get at the brakes and gas. So it was a stressful car dream. I managed to get control of the van but later on after some weirdness walking through a stranger's house deep in mourning Philip went to run an errand. He ended up crashing on his bicycle and couldn't walk.

Often times, the best part of my dreams, which are nearly always nightmares, is when I curl up in a ball and sleep or rest during which time the whole dream is permeated with static comfort, a kind of quiet state. Strangely enough I am usually curled up comfortably against complete strangers to my real life self but who I recognize from some other place and time. When I am forced to action in my dream there is almost always a point at which my dream self, with total dream awareness, wishes desperately to rewind the dream to the static place where I was in a non-state.

What I find most curious is that those moments in the midst of nightmares, those perfect moments of peace and calm and comfort are never something I experience in real life, and when it happens in dreams it feeds my corporeal self. It stays with me all day as though it was a real memory and I revisit it again and again until the realness of it begins to fade. Whatever stranger I happened to cozy up to is like a protective barrier against a scene of violence or anxiety, like a windbreak. I am not a cuddly person in real life. I can't sleep with an arm around me, it breaks into the sense of quiet I need in order to sleep. When sitting too still and too close to someone, even someone I love more than anyone else in the world like Philip, I become unnaturally aware of their breathing, their heartbeats, their warmth, their hair, their smell, and it is all too close and I feel suffocated and suppressed.

Which leads me to tell you something very personal: I cannot sleep facing anyone. I cannot sleep with some one's breath blowing against my face. Even if that breath was the sweetest smelling on earth. The sensation of warm breath against my face feels like a tribal drumbeat pounding in my ears preventing me from being aware of anything else.

Sometimes I wonder if death is nothing more than permanently joining our own subconscious existence. I wonder if our dreams are less like a playground for our subconscious and more like a parallel universe in which our subconscious actually exists. How is it possible to dream of a spacecraft moving through my body and have it feel so real that it wakes me up with liquefied insides, organs still being pushed aside as solid matter moves through my body? Awake and feeling exactly as I did in my dream is enough to make a person feel like they are going mad.

Although, as it turns out, I was going mad.

I would prefer that death be completely still. I would prefer that it is an unconscious state in which my matter is transformed into different matter without my being at all aware of the metamorphosis from corpse to fertilizer or ash. I don't want to be permanently retired to my nightmare world which is filled with all the horrors of this living world, only worse, because they never stop. They never die. The wars are never over. The homework is never finished. The bus is always gone before I get there.

Those brief moments of total safety that allow me to, at last, really sleep are rare and those guardians of my peace and comfort are fleeting beacons of light in a dark so morbid that I often carry it around with me for hours after waking; the bleak war torn landscapes, the bodies in bags, the guns, the dying, the screams, the sorrow that develops into a shroud so thick it's like being buried alive; it is hard to believe that such a well developed hell is just a figment of my imagination.

It does explain why I am never very still in real life. Except for when I settle down with beer and watch reruns of favorite movies and sitcoms until I am so tired I can no longer hold a beer in my hand anymore. Any other time in my waking life I am a restless spirit. Before I quit smoking cigarettes I would read and smoke and that would settle me down. But without the cigarettes the books don't quiet my body or my mind. I find myself unable to concentrate. I need to tranquilize my head into a forced quietude.

This past week we have cut our beer drinking in half and both of us are feeling relieved to be finally easing up on the beer. Physically we feel cleaner and better. But in the last week my dream life has become more vivid again, harder to shake. My sleep has not been as good. Drinking a lot of beer has a very soporific effect not just on my body but on my subconscious as well. My sleep is less conscious. I don't remember my dreams as much, I sleep more deeply.

The only other remedy for my peculiar problem is sleeping pills I suppose. Yet I would prefer not to take them. I wonder if there are any psyche meds out there that can medicate the sleeping self? It's as though my subconscious needs it's own therapist and it's own particular medications. Wouldn't that be funny if I called a therapist and asked to make an appointment for my subconscious? Hearing such a request, I am sure, would inspire any therapist to rush me in for a consultation.

Having the dream life that I have has made me feel like an outsider for much of my life. It's like constantly existing in two worlds and at the same time not completely living in either. When you've just been crawling across war torn border lines in a nightmare the previous night, covered in bodies where no clean sunlight ever shines and you're in a social situation during the day time where you're supposed to make small talk it's difficult to transition. It's like trying to have an amiable insipid conversation over the constant haranguing of machine gun fire, only the person you're talking to doesn't hear the other noise.

Which makes me sound completely crazy. I can't tell people I didn't actually hear their comment about how much fun eating celery is because I was busy trying to shut out the noise from my previous nightmare, because that is like lighting up a neon sign on my forehead that reads: "STRAIGHT-JACKET ME NOW".

Am I the only one who thinks old fashioned straight-jackets are kind of chic?



*For anyone who doesn't know it already, I have never had a license to drive a car. I have a motorcycle license to drive my Vespa, but I can't drive a car.

Sleep Clinic

These wee pears are Red Sensation Bartlets. I love the beginning of the life of fruit where it's just beginning to swell, right at the first moment it looks like something you recognize as a future salad ingredient and not just a blown flower.

This lovely nonremontant rose is called Rosa Mundi and is a very old specimen. It is kin with the Apothecary Rose which was one of the first recorded rose species. I will try to get myself another Apothecary Rose as I had to leave one behind in California. It's really not surprising that I am attracted to these roses. They are much more suited to medicinal purposes than modern hybrid roses. Particularly because of their rose hip production which is much stronger and the strong scent of the flower.

When I was a plucky fifteen year old I went through a brief phase of eating roses with my other plucky friend named Jenny. I really don't know what made us do it. We ate roses of all colors. We found the fuscia ones were the tastiest. It's a good thing they turned out to be edible. It was probably Jenny's idea. She had lots of those. I can't say I've ever been particularly pliable in other people's hands, but I did think Jenny was intriguingly tragic. Later on I learned that tragic people do not make the best friends.

I thought I would share this little garden "plan" with you. I know how you've come to rely on my wholesome scientific approach to all aspects of my life and I don't want to let you down. These drawings have obviously been meticulously drawn to scale. I am a stickler for precision. My mom helped me plan this out according to the deceptively simple concept of companion planting. I really wanted one whole bed of basil. Remember? For all the pesto I want to make and to freeze. My mom insisted I mix it in with the tomatoes.

One major problem with companion planting is that some things just don't play nice, apparently. While you can plant anything with lettuce, apparently only spinach should be paired with eggplants. I'm cheating. I'm putting peppers and tomatilloes in the same bed because there's no where else to plant them. The idea is to not plant family members together or else you will be inviting pestilence to ravish them. Is this how come human families tend to fan out amongst the populace? To avoid pestilence? Is this why everyone jokes so much about the rather insular folks in the Appalachian mountains? (I have heard that some of my stock were from just such an uneducated poor Appalachian family of Irish descent. But stories in my family tend to change over the years so you can never really be sure of who you are. I guess it keeps things interesting)

I'm not speaking to myself today. I'm that mad. Do any of you remember me talking about trying to accomplish a few things from a list every single day to try to get a little healthier? On that list were things like: take your multi vitamin, get to sleep by 10 pm, drink eight glasses of water, stretch, exercise... remember how some of you wisely advised me to only try to tackle one or two things at a time? I really have stuck with that. I now have found a way to make sure I take my vitamins with my meds every day (I use a pill divider that has one compartment for every day of the week, so they are all ready for me to take when I get up in the morning. Very ingenious!), I have also been keeping up with lots of stretching.

Unfortunately what's killing me is not getting to bed by 10 pm. Having been a serious insomniac for the greater part of my life, I have some issues with sleep. First of all, I don't actually like doing it. I mean, now that I have a kid, I kind of treasure it for how it helps me to survive, but I don't like getting into bed. Having extremely disturbing nightmares frequently for the majority of my life has not helped my view of sleeping as being an over rated activity not unlike watching a long string of truly distressing horror films that feel like they're coming to life. Plus, you can't drink beer in your sleep.

I don't actually have insomnia now. Having a kid has mostly fixed that problem. (Except for the few weeks after that nasty little earthquake we had whose epicenter was almost right underneath our house. I'd still be in a nasty cycle of insomnia if I hadn't started taking Paxil at that time. Which my therapist had really wanted me to do a year before in order to help me with my cognitive behavioral work which I was finding challenging because my anxiety was sort of off the charts. Sometimes doctors do know best.)

Anyway, this resistance to getting to bed at a reasonable time is not helping me at all. Not in any way. I broke this cycle of resistance once before. Ironically, it was not too long before that earthquake I just mentioned. I had been losing weight by watching my portions, exercising, only drinking two beers a day (I realize that to some people this sounds excessive, but doctors generally agree that two a day, while not being ideal, isn't actually a problem), and getting into bed by 9pm to read for an hour before sleep. I actually got to looking forward to getting into bed with a book. It was hard establishing this routine, but once I did I definitely felt better.

Part of the trick was keeping our room relatively clean and we painted the walls, got some new nice bedding, and put some pretty pictures on the wall. Doing this made the room a pleasant place to be. I can't say I feel that way about our current room. But you know, our current room is tiny, has a very small window, and just isn't an inspiring place to be. I painted the walls, it's true. But the furniture isn't pretty like our old furniture was. I keep planning on finding a couple of posters of Nick and Nora to frame. Maybe a couple of pictures of me and Philip too, when we looked just as stylish as Nick and Nora.

My doctor has actually suggested I go back to therapy for several good reasons. I am no longer afraid to seek help like I was for so many years before. Yet I haven't made the call. Partly because that will be one more complication in my life. One more appointment to remember. Partly I'm afraid of the expense. My insurance will only cover so much of my visits. This could be a drain on our dwindling resources. This is also why I have failed to call a chiropractor. Or a masseuse, which I could really use to unknot my neck and shoulders. I normally hate people touching me and for that reason I have actually never had a massage by anyone but Philip. He gives pretty good massages but I've come to the point where I think I need to let someone really have a go at my stiff neck.

Anyway. I've been staying up super late. Falling asleep in my chair. Waking up in my chair at 2 or 3am. That's not beauty sleep. That's HAG sleep. And it needs to change. So I'm going to chew on possible ways to either convince myself to go to bed earlier or ways to deceive myself into complying. So this is my new goal in my on going personal make-over efforts: to get to bed by 10pm. Asleep by 11pm. Someone needs to take away my DVD privileges. Any one want to volunteer to come to my house at 10pm, turn my television off, and stand guard there until I am safely ensconced in bed with a book? Thanks! I'll show you my appreciation by swearing at you and kicking and screaming the whole way to bed. Because I'm so mature that way.