lots to do at night

I'm scared to complain to people sometimes that I'm tired, because the conversation may end up going this way:

Tired? Well, what time did you go to bed?

Umm, around midnight, or maybe a little later.

And what time do you get up?

Oh, about 5:50 is when my alarm goes off, then I lie there for a little while thinking about how tired I still am.

I see...what pressing obligations prevent you from going to bed a little earlier? Kids? Work? Chores? Studies? A second job?

Oh, well, like, last night I had to look up pictures of famed designer Tapio Wirkkala, and there are other nights when there are other really important things like that I need to do, like look at the all the different cover art for the Moomin books through the years, or I have to look for an important piece of paper of some kind that I just then remembered about. Plus I can't go to bed without reading for at least twenty minutes.

Maybe you could start reading around 10:00 or 10:30.

(blank look)

***
Look how awesome looking Tapio Wirkkala was! He was a Laplander and the quintessential ruddy finn, by the looks of things.



I thought I had pinkeye, but I don't. So unless something else highly contagious enters my life before tomorrow morning, I guess I'll be going to school, and I guess I'll be trying to teach about government against a background of frenetic christmas anticipation.

Is there any way to GIVE myself pinkeye, do you think?

"Oh, yeah, I was going to start reading my book at 10:30, and be dead asleep by 11:00 with my clothes for tomorrow laid out and everything, but then I had to get up and, you know, do some research online about contaminating my own eye..."

Good night, then.

P.S. I like Cat Power, although somewhat against my better judgement. There is one song on "The Greatest" that centers around the line "I hate myself and I want to die." I like the song, not because I hate myself and I want to die, but because it's spooky and dark. Anyway, I read in an interview with her that she really was suicidal when she was making the record, and now she's feeling fine and adamantly doesn't hate herself or want to die, so now when she sings that song, she sings, "I don't hate myself, and I don't want to die." Why would anyone say, "I don't hate myself, and I don't want to die?" Doesn't just not singing it seem like a better idea?