i only really know two jokes. telling either of them makes me terribly self conscious. it may be because they both are making fun of populations of people that i easily could be part of, but for one reason or another i am currently not. so as my way of attempting to be politically correct, i will apologize up in front. i am sorry. truly, i know it is an american thing this silly little joke. and it is not the kindest of things to pose as questions. it has a corollary in my insular little world.
here goes...
question:
what is the difference between a tornado and a divorce in the south?
answer:
not much, either way someone loses a trailer home.
so why did i go out of my way to ask such a silly thing?
well, i have a little trouble fitting in with the rest of my world. i don't sleep regular hours and sometimes i am completely upside down on those. right now, my australian period is in play. the one where i fall asleep as the sun is rising and awaken just before the phone call from my high schooler comes asking where her ride home is.
i really hate that phone call.
it embarrasses me... as does all of these weird hours of wakefulness and sleep do.
of course, my doctor and i have spoken about it and she seems to feel it is fine if it affords me time to be productive and comfortable enough in daily stuff that i feel needs doing.
so this has been going on in some form or another most of my life. i am happy at night. late at night. when there are few other folks out there in the world enjoying productive lives.
if i were prone to calling it something that others could understand, it would be that its the third shift.
luckily, with the internet and other entertainment, i am never really alone during these hours.
i have a sweet friend i chat with on a pretty regular basis, and she is from australia.
her world is exactly 12 hours off from my own.
well i mean i know what part of her conventionally experienced day we can chat and overlap with activities of child rearing, jewelry findings and grocery shopping. i really enjoy our time together such as it is.
why did i tell you the silly joke?
well it is because often i try to re-set my internal clock to coincide with my family members' biological wavelengths for more harmonious living. it is not easy. having had the flu the last couple of weeks, i was tired out beyond reason and did little more than change the tv channel or sleep. so my own habits reverted to this upside down schedule. i am back to trying to get into a more daylight driven experience, but it is not always easy. no matter what time of day or night i put myself into my sleep coma, i am pretty sure my darling dog is going to wake me up between 1:30 and 3:30 a.m..
it is inconvenient at worst. but it does happen. nearly every night. sometimes he just glares at me out of his pretty brown eyes as if to say, why can't you turn out the lights? i am trying to nap here. so i have to try to be kind about our stealthy sorties in the darker hours to do a quick neighborhood check and piddle. i check, he piddles.
he is likely to do this in the middle of the night as a long standing habit, since when we brought him home to live with us, he was not yet housebroken. i am enough of a hippie, that crating him to teach him when he could go outside seemed sort of inefficient and cruel. instead, i spent a lot of hours when it was dark outside, out in my back yard with him. he was housebroken in just a few days. my family took credit for this in their usual way, not having had much to do with this process. it wasn't a terrible hardship on me, since the 4th Harry Potter book, The Goblet of Fire had just been released. i needed to read it to keep abreast of my daughter's progress with consuming it. also, you literally can read by the light of the street lamps in my neighborhood.
after all is said and done, it works out for everyone, in spite of my quirkiness. this family has NO shortage of quirks in each member. so i am just gonna have to keep rolling with the needs that are expressed regarding late hours and when the puppster wants out.
this is why i do it.
he is adorable and my buddy.
in spite of what the kids say.
he is a good companion and scares the snot out of anyone unwanted on our front steps.
two perfect reasons to have any dog ever.
for the most part, he is delicate and misses all of my clutter, i mean my work areas, like he is picking his way through a mine field. only when his tail feathers are too long and he is excitedly wagging, do things go out of place. they can get caught in the mix and get relocated across the room. i can deal with that though.
here is what he is able to move around without missing a step.
i have trays like this all around the living room... with projects in some phase or another. things rarely go amiss unless i am involved. that is of course a much different story and one of terror for sharing around a campfire some night.
so i am going to give this ole weird sleep thing another go ... since the pup has had his 2 am constitutional in the snows of new england. i need to rest up, because my daughter's school has set their clocks during mid-terms for a two hour delay of the start of school. the premise was that it would be risky with the amount of snow predicted by morning. it has started and stopped. the accumulation is about an inch, maybe two inches. last week we had significantly more and there was no kind of acknowledgement of any commuting/traffic inconveniences.
so in their mighty foresightedness, the school dept. has not only delayed the start of school for two hours, but also the exam schedule for another day.
my daughter is much like water... always finding a way into any crevice. she interprets these events as an opportunity to stay home from school to study.
this looks a lot like something else when she does it. one hand on her iphone, one on my computer, some chocolate snack on her lap and gossip girls in the background of either the tv or the computer.
while she studies.
yeah.
right.
i am best off not watching this, because somehow it becomes my problem.
her feeling is that since i use the computer while watching t.v., she ought to be allowed to as well.
this is not a good syllogism.
she lives dangerously. very dangerously.
i am often editing photos, surfing the wily outpost of facebook, or even in a pinterest fugue state.
i am not writing critical essays that will be evaluated by some of the most casually insane teachers of this century. i have met them and they really are so very deeply perplexing, frustrating and troubling, i find anything other than the best imaginable focus to contend with an outcome of any interchange with any of them is a scary thing. it requires consistency and deep attention.
none of which, if i were in her place, i could attempt in this age.
it was harder when i was in school, as the internet was probably a fantasy of the then 8 year old Al Gore. not the functional life blood of every red-blooded american teen these days.
you know who they are... the ones that say in very condescending tones,
"mom, it is intuitive. why don't you get this?"
shut. up. you . little. shits.
i can reupholster a sofa, make a roux, and still answer 2/3 of the jeopardy questions while offering directions to get somewhere by car on one ways streets. pretty much all at the same time and you still do not know how to load a dishwasher or that women have TWO ovaries.
i keep my temper in check as often as possible.
and sleep to offset the deficits that conditions like these offer daily.
and when i snag that few moments of light that will be coming my way in a few more hours, i will photograph the fleet of rings and bracelets i made last night.
cheers! mates... see y'all soon i hope.
xo.
w.
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