Not understanding how time works

Today I cooked a brown rice salad that has corn, avocadoes, toasted almonds, onions, and dill pickles in it! I also made a cucumber-fennel salad, and I did the first step in a six-week eggplant curing process. I also mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors and I did some other housewifery type things. I will have good things to eat this week, and could even eat them off the floor if I wanted to!

Last week was all about insomnia, which I associate with deserts. Each night was its own separate desert, stretching agonizingly flat and dry, with barely enough sleep to fit in the shadow of one cactus. It's hard not to approach breakdown territory when these two things are true: 1. You have barely slept for three nights in a row, and 2. Your students, after several weeks of learning about local, state, and national government, think that Washington, D.C. belongs in the "Local" category. Yes, hard not to approach breakdown territory then.

What's saving my bacon* right now is that I don't have a regular day tomorrow, so I probably won't have insomnia, because I won't be worried about having insomnia, because I can sleep a little later than usual, you know? And here's how my understanding of time goes: I don't have to be at the place I have to be until 8:25 - an hour and a half later than I usually get to work. So I believe that means that tonight I can stay up as late as I want, and can also plan to get a bit of exercise in the morning, stop at the bank so I have cash for lunch, and stop for coffee. In my mind, I don't actually have to be there until 1 p.m.

*When I had the translation company job, there was a British guy who did German translation from our office sometimes and if I did him a favor he'd say, "Thanks, you've saved my bacon this time!"

That just reminded me of going into the basement of Drake's in Ann Arbor, the amazing candy store/sandwich shop of 1929 vintage and of questionable health code status, and finding several containers labeled "Fish Grease."

And that made me go online for pictures, etc. of Drake's, which made me kind of blue and nostalgic. I could write a whole lot about crazy Drake's... too bad it's a Bruegger's Bagels now, and they ripped out all the pea-green booths and covered or removed the beautiful tin ceilings. Wouldn't want it to look different than the other Bruegger's Bagels, right?

She said with slouched back, from the edge of a mussed bed

Today it was like I had no muscles. I was tired. Exhausted. Depleted. Spent. At the library, I looked at the staircase to the second floor and wondered, "Can I do it?" I did do it, it turns out, but the library jaunt (which is not the right word, since it implies jauntiness) was followed by a long time in bed unable to do anything. The sky grew dark. I still hadn't gotten out my lesson plan book. The sky grew darker still. I hadn't written my 28 thank you notes to my students. The sky got really freakin' dark, and I hadn't gotten my school things ready for tomorrow. Finally I dragged my muscle-free bones out of bed and accomplished the three above things in amazingly good time. I'm going to get back into bed now, and hope that my muscles come back. It takes not only muscles, but energy, great bolts of energy, to get through the first day of school after the "holiday" break...

(I put "holiday" in quotes because it's a funny euphemism. Our school calendar totally revolves around one set of holidays only...).

Oh, and as I fall asleep, I'm going to listen to the first podcast from season 1 of the Ricky Gervais Show! I bought the first season from ITunes today and I'm excited. I haven't heard any of it, but I love him so.

ONE MORE THING: I feel like the tide is starting to change. People like me are finally getting some credit, some power in this society. We are the shameful neighbor, daughter, cousin, friend, sister no longer! Now we are somebody to look up to! What do I mean? Well, in the last few weeks I have acquired the following new pieces of information, based on Science:

1. Slouching is better for back health than sitting up straight.
2. Unmade beds are more sanitary than made beds.
3. Neatness in the workplace is actually a sign of wasted time and money, whereas messiness in the workplace is, paradoxically, a sign of productivity and the basis of many a EUREKA! moment.

I'm so happy! Who the hell needs muscles? I have the world!

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?