About how you cheer yourself up in winter

First, buy one of these:

And, I watch stuff like this: 

And I wish I were somewhere like this:

About Friday

What I like about Friday

When I wake up and remember what day it is.

Casual Friday.

Somebody brings in donuts.

Knowing it's the last drive to work of the week.

Having a schedule that's maybe not quite as busy as Thursday was.

Having somebody say, "Where we goin' for lunch?"

Going to Chinese buffet and talking about movies and what we're doing on the weekend and politics and news then reading our fortunes and half-believing them.

Friday afternoon.

Having somebody call or text and want to know, "What we doin' tonight?" then making dinner plans.

Checking stuff off the to-do list one by one, tidying up the week.

Realizing it's finally time to leave, and flying home.

Dinner at Outback, making weekend plans.

Home to a movie and knowing it's okay NOT TO DO ANYTHING FOR THE REST OF THE EVENING.

Going to bed, knowing the weekend stretches before you, time unowned.

Friday.

About the tired side of midnight

I woke up tired.
I always wake up sleepy--I'm loath to give up the sweet surcease of sleep any morning. But being an enthusiastic, sound sleeper, I rarely wake up tired. It just takes me awhile and a cup of something to jolt me totally awake. I usually manage by lunch.
But last night--
Maybe it was that half-glass of merlot I had with dinner. Something in a red dances with something in my brain, then drains into my bones, rendering them useless. Not normally one to nap, that merlot set me up for losing a half-hour of the evening somewhere. Which probably got my sleep cycle all screwed up.

But a few chores and some reading, then some Facebooking and surfing got my head on straight and I didn't feel too off-kilter.
Then I decided to have some fun, where fun means working on some writing. Just messing around. Except it was way fun, and kind of, well, stimulating. I made myself quit by 11, being a working kind of girl.
At which time my body was ready for bed, but my brain was not.

How nimbly the mind moves at night! How insightful did I become, there in the dark, peeking now and then at the clock, where the hours that are so familiar to me in the afternoon--1:00, 2:00--became something interesting to explore, here on the tired, unfamiliar side of midnight.
And what a paradox--even I as knew I should sleep, that I would pay for this alertness at alarm time--that "gleaning my teeming brain" was almost ... enjoyable. That I was almost following myself around my head.

Perhaps something in the freedom of the hours--indeed, this time set apart not for work nor chores nor socializing, just sleep, merely sleep--was enticing.

Or perhaps the bit of merlot made things seem better than they were.

Eventually, my brain caught up with my body, and thoughts turned to dreams.

Leading me eventually to, the tired side of morning! 

About January 20, 2009

Shield your eyes,

For the view from the mountaintop

Is both blinding and terrifying.

We're too close to the sun,

And too far from familiar earth.

Up here it seems we could fly,

Just lean forward and and let the

Rare air hold us aloft,

Straining our eyes to look

Over the far, hazy, hopeful horizon.

Storm warning

It's not frigid yet. That air is to come,
Packed isobars piling down upon us.
Right now it's tolerable, and I can tell
By the way the snow crunches underfoot.
When the arctic air comes, the snow will moan, 
Although my boots will leave the same footprints
As I cross the street.
It's quiet on Hearthstone Drive this late afternoon.
Above me the sky is a placid, even grey
As if reflecting the snow beneath.
The air's dead. Calm. 
Almost like there's no air.
It's so still that my short walk seems an affront
To a midwinter still life.
Like when you take a deep, deep breath
And hold it a moment.
You know your heart is still beating,
Yet there's a pause. And then exhale.

About the cleanliness of snow

The cleanliness of snow

If defoliating, destructive winter
Tends to expose and exaggerate
The flaws of the flattened, bleak landscape
Perhaps we should all be more tolerate of
The clean, artful spareness
Of new snow.

About the dog always dies

So I decide for Christmas break I'll pick up a little light reading.

And the commercial for the Marley & Me movie catches my interest, because I sis-love Jennifer Anniston and wish she were my BFF, and although I had resisted reading the book until that very moment, I decide it's exactly what I need to read.

So I buy it.

And as I read it, I realize it's as much the story of a family as of a dog. Luckily the family seems much more functional than the dog, because dude, that dog would have lasted about five minutes in my house. Who has time or patience to deal with a four-legged, tail-whipping, tornado of destruction?

Sorry, I just lied in the previous paragraph, about that five minutes thing.

Because although our dog, Buffy the Wonder Dog, has been gone from us for over 10 years, her memory lingers long -- longer than her smell did in the garage -- and I do her a disservice to say I would not have tolerated a Marley when I did, indeed, tolerate a Buffy, for 14 years. Fourteen loooooonnnnngggg years.

Buffy was a lifelong puppy, a cute and cuddly cockapoo who didn't know a stranger, full of energy 'til her end, tolerant of small children and unfailingly loyal to her family.

In other words, Buffy was hard to control, needed an expensive haircut every four weeks, was useless as a watch dog, asked endlessly to be taken outside, ate everything the kids didn't, and, after sneaking out of the house to roll in any pile of dog poop she could find, came home a happy conquerer, tail wagging.

Buffy developed epilepsy in her first year, which necessitated her being on medication. Which she needed twice a day. Carefully spaced. Without fail. From a prescription. That I needed to get filled. At the drugstore. Every month. For thirteen years. A prescription written in her name. Buffy Dog Dee. If we took a trip, if we just had a long day, if I had a full schedule that made it hard to get to the drugstore ... didn't matter. Buffy's medication had to be given, and/or I had to make one more stop. Which I did. For. Thirteen. Years.

Later in life, Buffy developed another condition that necessitated medication--incontinence. The good news, the pills only had to be given twice a week. The bad news, they were more expensive than the epilepsy meds. The good news, the pills worked pretty well. The bad news, who needs their dog peeing everywhere? Which is why she needed them in the first place.

She also developed a strange skin condition of knotty cysty things on her body, including one on her tail. They didn't hurt, they weren't malignant, they just ... looked like hell. So we had them taken off. Let's just say that one cost ... hundreds. That operation made the haircuts seem reasonable.

So why do people like us keep a poop-rolling, snack-eating, haircut-needing, medically challenged dog?

For one: she was ours. She loved us, so she was worth it.

And the other: she was Tony's little sibling--the one he could boss around, feel bigger than, baby. She was the youngest child's little sister. She cheerfully took the rough-housing, the bossing, the love. And Tony learned how to love someone weaker, littler, and even more ornery than him. 

Worth a few dog-poop baths.

Even eternal puppies get old, and by the time the kids were young teenagers, Buffy was a senior citizen. Her heart grew feeble, as did she, and one fall day it was evident to all that Buffy had done her job as trainer of children. Her long-time vet helped ease her into whatever next world dogs go to--truthfully, he shed more tears than I did.

The years of haircuts, medication and clean-up had rendered me a little less grief-stricken than perhaps I should have been.

Which brings me back to Marley. Who, I should have guessed, dies at the end of the book.

And here comes the difference between Marley's family & me.

It seems the Grogan family had not had enough. Soon after Marley's departure, they adopted a new puppy. Brave, foolish souls.

Me, on the other hand, had had more than enough. Buffy the Wonder Dog did me in forever for dogs. No more dogs for us. Nope. Lesson learned.

Emphasis on dogs there. 

Don't even get me started about the cat(s).