I’m awake this morning at 4:30 am again. I’ve been doing this off and on for the past few years.
I think big thoughts, deep thoughts, annoying thoughts, silly thoughts, can’t get back to sleep thoughts.
I think about why I’m not moving along faster in my current (next) phase of my life. And then I start to answer my own question with some ideas that occurred to me before, but I’d never followed up on. Now I will. And then I ponder tomorrow’s Condo Board meeting, and that leads me to think about how I can feel both compassion and frustration with the other homeowners, all at the same time. And that’s frustrating to me. After that observation, I try to slow my breathing down and fall into the famously talked about the meditative moment between thought and awareness of my thoughts. And hey that actually worked and I start to fall asleep but then I need to roll over.
I roll over onto my stomach but that’s never a good idea because my knees hurt when I sleep on my stomach. I roll over again.
I’m beginning to feel that I might be saying the words “Bite Me” a lot today. So I make a mental note to listen to a lot of James Brown.
I hear a bird chirp and notice the light poking through the sides of my blackout shade. It’s now 6:30 am. I say the heck with it, sit up and have an out-loud conversation about everything I’ve been pondering. When I feel somebody’s listening to me I always feel better, even if I can’t see or touch the somebody. I bring my laptop to bed and edit my Toastmasters talk. In general, I feel pretty good about it and record it so I can replay and memorize it.
By now I’m just too tired for Zumba class so I take a shower and wash my hair. While in the middle of drying my hair the hairdryer sparks fireworks and dies. Wow…really?! Ok, not a problem I’ll just use my travel size hairdryer…oh…right…that one is at my boyfriend’s place. One side of my head has smooth, wavy hair and the other side is huge like a bird’s nest.
Off I go to Target in search of a new hairdryer.
I ask a couple of store employees where the hair dryers are. When I take my rain slicker hood off, I point to my hair and tell them my hairdryer broke. They look at me, laugh loudly and one says “well at least it’s raining today and you can wear your hood”. The dryers all have various product features. Some have ions, some are ceramic, others are infrared and some are tourmaline. I have no idea what they’re talking about and grab the one with all of the features listed because it’s only a few dollars more anyway. The promise is to make one’s hair smooth and shiny and I wonder if they’ve tested it on women with diminishing hormones and changing hair texture.
When I return home I notice how green everything is from the rain. The lake looks so peaceful, the leaves are chartreuse and there’s a foggy mist over it all. While staring out the window I realize I no longer feel like saying “bite me”.