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 Leap Day

It's a rather vaporous day, isn't it? Sometimes here, most times not.

In the paper on Thursday, the birthdays for Friday were listed in leap-years--for example, "Rapper Ja Rule is 8 (born in 1976)." I read another story online about a little girl who's 12...but celebrating her real birthday for the third time. And another lady was turning 19--in leap time. She's really 76. Read it here»

On msnbc.com, there's an article embracing the whimsy of February 29, calling it "a breather day, a day to catch up, a wild card...."

I wish. Because when I hauled my body out of bed this morning, it just seemed like one more day to go to work.

Do you know what the extra day is called in a leap year? "Intercalary."

Read a more than you want to know about leap years on:
Wikipedia»
infoplease»
timeanddate»

Did you know that leap year is traditionally a time when women can propose marriage?»

Did you know that there is an Honor Society of Leap Year Babies?»


How can you figure out what year is a leap year? By using the Leap Year Calculator»

How to celebrate leap year? Of course there are online resources:
www.leapyearday.com/
charon.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leapyear.html

Why have a leap year (if you haven't visited any of the above links)? Because the actual length of a year is 365.242 days....

Need some leap year gifts? Oh yea, you can buy some»

Did you know there's a movie called Leap Year? Made in 1921»

Okay, enough.

How about you? How are you spending this intercalary day?

About, turn the page

I wrote previously of the way January lingers on my calendar, in a way no other month of the year does.
Today, though, I must turn the page, and comes now February, and then, and then.
Since I was a teenager, I've kept some kind of calendar or organizer, and on it I keep my appointments and obligations, and I'll jot notes of what I did or where we had lunch or whatever went on of a day.
If my high school Hallmark calendar booklet had things like "4pm, band practice" and "4th period, student council," my 21st-century version has things like "9am, mammogram" and "4pm, pick up grandkids at babysitter."
Who knew.
If my little notebook's month past looks like so many chicken scratches--every day filled with some reminder or outing or due date--and it's only through that month's scratchy notes that I can even remember how we filled our busy days--there is a certain satisfaction in turning a new leaf, and beginning again with a month of empty squares, waiting to be filled with the minutiae of my life.
And even before the month begins, the squares begin to fill with "dentist's appointment," and "Jayme's birthday" and "basketball game" and "vacation!"
And if there is potential in every empty day, there is also danger; while last Tuesday might have been "doctor's appointment," next Thursday might be "followup tests," and who knows what goes beyond that? With grace and luck, it's just "dinner out, Appleby's" and the pages turn again.
So today, I must say goodbye to January, loved and hated, the longest month of the year, but the coldest, whose beginning is the end of the holiday season, and whose end leaves us longing for spring, always a new beginning.
So I turn the page: so long, January. What will fill my squares in this new month?
How about you? How are your pages turning?

About how January goes

If today the world is worried about global warming, I find myself worried about global speeding, for surely the Earth has quickened its pace around the sun.
If the years of my childhood seemed tinged by infinity, my grownup years are all too finite.
Why does July, my favorite month of the year, which is as long as a month can be with 31 wonderful, daylight-savings-time extended days when light lingers long into evening, why does it go by like a ride on the Blue Streak at Cedar Point?
And how did December, that month of antagonizing anticipation for children everywhere, once as slow-moving as any ponderous social studies class, how did it go into hyperdrive, so that I no more throw away the last of the cranberry sauce when I'm late sending the Christmas cards out and then suddenly it's Happy New Year? How could a month change its character so thoroughly?
I'm thinking of one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite books, "...And Ladies of the Club" by Helen Hooven Santmyer (1982, Ohio State University Press):
"And as always, for as far back as she could remember, she saw the shape of the year: not round, like a clock's face, but a kind of irregular polygon.... She saw herself a lonely figure moving around the many-side face of the year: up the steep slope of November; December rising sharply to a peak, Christmas the high point of the twelve months; January sloping in a long slow downward line, the longest month; February shorter, dropping more steeply; March, another long line, falling almost vertically to April; April and May turning backward and slanting down; June dropping more swiftly to the other high point of the year, or low point: The Fourth of July.... July itself was another almost horizontal line, merging into August, the next to the longest month, rising only slightly to September's outward slant; then three months of climbing back to the beginning again, through October, November, and December to another Christmas."
Which brings me to January, and it is indeed as Miss Santmyer says: the longest month. Which brings me to a long/hate relationship with its long days, for January is the only month, now, in my life that that doesn't seem over before it begins. If I hate the let-down after the holidays, the back-to-work discipline of days, the "dead of winter" feeling of snow storms and freezing temperatures, I can't help but appreciate its longevity; January lingers, as the rest of the year does not.
Come Friday, even this longest month will be gone, traded for the shortest; my polygon journey will continue.
How about you? Are you coming along for the ride?