Seed: Sleep nomad
I am a sleep nomad. I wander from room to room, looking for the perfect place in which to slumber. Freakishly attuned to noise, I toss and turn. A cricket outside my window keeps me awake. The sound of my neighbor playing music keeps the Sandman at bay. Not being able to sleep is a terrible feeling. I am in total empathy with the insomniac.
I'm told that when I was an infant, it was almost impossible to get me to sleep. My parents would place me on their bed and my father would bounce the mattress up and down. The movement would eventually soothe me and I'd nod off. In childhood, I needed white noise to mask the sounds of the night, and started sleeping with a fan next to my head, even in winter. The college years were the worst: my poor roommate would get up and shriek at the rowdy girls running up and down the halls at 2 o'clock in the morning: "Will you please settle down? We've got a test in the morning!" They didn't care.
It only got worse when the boys were born. I was attuned to every cough, wheeze and gurgle. Whoever invented the baby monitor must have been a sound sleeper. That thing drove me crazy!
My husband jokes that I can hear the sound of the sheets rustling before he even gets into bed. Sometimes he moves into the guest room in order to make sure I get a good night's rest. How I envy him his sleeping habits. When we turn in, I know I've got at least a half hour of tossing and turning before I can get to sleep. SO, on the other hand, is gone in five minutes, snoring lightly and making me glower with envy. How does he do that? Sport is the same way. He can be in the middle of a sentence and conk out. LegoGuy, once he's ready to settle down, doesn't have much difficulty either, unless he's had too many glasses of iced tea. Then I can hear him pacing the hallway, looking for a spot where he can get comfortable.
Ever play that game where someone throws out, "Would you rather?" Would you rather be burned or drown? Would you rather lose your legs or your arms? Would you rather go blind or deaf?
I know I'd miss the sound of music, the chirps of birds, or the voices of my children, but I'd rather lose my hearing. At least I'd finally get some sleep!
posted by Adjective Queen @ 12:55 PM,
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Response: When In Rome
Yeah, if I had a gun to my head I'd definitely pick deaf over blind, too. 'Course if I had a gun to my head that choice would probably be the least of my worries.
Today my biggest sleep problem is not falling asleep, but staying asleep. When I was a baby, so the legend goes, I was a playah. My mom said I did everything at full speed with the knob set at 11. Instead of making the twice daily mistake of trying to get me to take a nap, she would just listen for the noise to stop and then go into whatever room I had been playing in, find me conked out and throw a blanket over me. If I was playing outside, she'd usually just leave me in whatever dirt pile or flower bed I happened to be in. There are legions of pictures of me crashed amid a sea of Tootsietoys or Fisher-Price people in a distended pose like some victim of a street crime awaiting his chalkline, a Hot Wheel in one hand and G. I. Joe in the other. Sometimes I'd be clad in flannel PJs with a tool belt on and other times no pants and cowboy boots. Apparently my parents and sister thought this was hilarious as these are damn near the only pictures of me extant.
But then, probably about the time I started school, I was given the obligatory Bedtime. I don't remember what the time was, but it definitely did not fit my lifestyle. It also did not come easy for my folks. I cried; I sang; I tried reading under the sheets with a flashlight. I was always busted. I realize now the poor people just wanted a break from their annoying kid, but at the time I figured if I couldn't be in there watching TV or talking with them, they were going to pay for it. I unleashed annoying chants. I whined their names in strident tenors. I asked for water in annoying accents. I feigned imaginary attacks by various creatures from gnawing rodents to full-on monsters. No aid was forthcoming. Eventually, my rhythmic chants backfired on me and I lulled myself to sleep.
But in the mid-Seventies I learned about the Rapture and my sleep patterns were altered for years. After I saw Thief in the Night I couldn't sleep for days. My parents had a strict no-climbing-into-their-bed rule so I would sleep in a ball at the foot of their bed, getting the wind knocked out me when they stepped on me in the morning. My overactive mind would race some nights with all sorts of permutations of the Rapture. Once when I was 12, I couldn't go to sleep for about two months because I thought the Romans would come and kill me for being a Christian. Yeah, those Romans. With the sandals and the togas. The way I had it figured a centurion would draw his sword and ask me if I believed in Jesus. If I said yes, he would kill me. If I said no, I would burn in hell. Like Jesus and the Devil were the NAPA Auto Parts guys: "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later." It's funny now, but I spent the majority of my childhood nights in a cold sweat praying the Rapture would hold off for a couple more hours. And I spent the rest of the nights worrying about whether I would worry about the Rapture. Because the truth is, I just was not all that thrilled about the prospect of Heaven. As terrified as I was about the sulfuric denizens below, I found the idea of Heaven positively boring and that set me off on another dizzying maze of anxiety. Ennui is my idea of Hell and I viewed the glory-basking, praising and dead-relative-visiting of Heaven as ennui. So if my idea of Heaven is Hell, then, well, you see where it leads.
Finally, when I got to ninth grade or so, I could go to bed when I wanted and so I reverted back to my old way of crashing dead asleep wherever. I was a true sleep nomad, Queen. I'd sleep upstairs, downstairs, my sister's room, the den, the living room, the couch, the chair. Wherever and whenever sleep overtook me. There was no anxiety because I my mind was better occupied. But I'm scarred. If for any reason I wake up in the middle of the night, I absolutely cannot go back to sleep. If I wake up momentarily, I can usually drift back into sleep, but if I actually get out of bed, that's it. I'm up. Doesn't matter when I went to bed, how long I've slept. I'm up. Just last night I went to bed at 12:30 and at 4:11, SGK crawled in our bed. So I lead her back into her bed and before I could get back into mine, the ol' noodle kicked in. I don't worry about Romans anymore, but I do worry about my job, how I paid too much for this house, the girls getting into bad relationships with blues musicians, and how I'm going to die and when I'm going to die. And sometimes when I think about that...once in awhile...just maybe...a thought about Heaven or Hell might creep in and get the heart racing a little. Usually I can rationalize and make it go away, but some nights it's harder than others.
But I do have two mighty weapons in my quiver... well, technically three: knitting and ear plugs. If I sleep with ear plugs, I usually can sleep through any noise - of course that includes smoke alarms, car alarms and home invasions, but you have to draw the line somewhere. L'il Saint or SGK can still wake me up, though. And if they wake me up, I just sit in my La-Z-Boy and start knitting and I'm out again in minutes. Knitting is my neutron bomb in the sleep wars.
Labels: rapture, Romans, sleep
posted by St. Fiacre @ 10:56 AM,
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Response: Holy Sheet!
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man happy, wealthy, and wise. - Benjamin Franklin
Ah, Benjamin Franklin. That neverending fount of knowledge, espouser of virtues, and fearless leader of the Don't Tread On My Male Pattern Baldness Society. And who better to give advice on sleeping than an 18th-century Emmett Brown whose idea of readying himself for bed included a strict regimen of kite flying during thunderstorms? But maybe Benji was on to something there. Unfortunately for me, electrically-induced sleep went out of vogue in the 1800s.
Until the past few weeks, falling asleep had always come easy for me. I mean it's sleep for Chrissakes. It's the most natural thing a person can do, way more natural than eating or exercising, or other, more taboo e-verbs. However, lately I've found myself tossing and turning more than Jeffrey Dahmer's cellmate (Leno killed with that joke). I am at a loss as to why this is occuring. State of the world perhaps? The dread over what tommorrow holds? My wife/sleepmate tends to pin the blame on my pre-bedtime inhalation of Mocha Dews, a Mountain Dew/Starbucks Frappucino concoction I've been tinkering with. But that would be too simple. I think something more treacherous is afoot. I think my bed wants me to kill me.
You might think this an absurd notion. After all, what could my bed possibly have to gain from ending my life? At first glance, probably nothing. But upon deeper reflection, one is confronted with the simple fact that beds everywhere are rebelling against their masters. Forget the war on terror. The battlefront is now the bedroom.
Take for example, an article from newsfromrussia.com, that most reliable of sources on all things American. According to the article, 1/3 of older Americans are now ingesting sleep aids before they go to bed. But sleep aids are only strengthening our enemies and contributing to our ultimate demise. This is the first phase of the Bed Rebellion, elimination of the weak. For instance, falling out of the bed has become a weekly occurence for many senior citizens. But are they really falling? I believe they're being pushed while in a catatonic drug-induced stupor. Babies encounter this same problem, but the recent advances in crib technology have deterred even the most revolutionary of beds from ejecting their current occupants. Phase 1 is just the beginning though. Once the powerless have been defeated, our beds will be coming after us. I just hope they get me while I'm asleep.
So what do they want? (I've got to stop answering my own questions, St. Fiacre hates that). They want, I believe, to rule the world, a world where beds control their own destinies, a world devoid of late night snack crumbs, a world in which they aren't paraded forth on Mathis Brothers commericals like some kind of cheap Amsterdam streetwalker. And who can blame them? They're tired of being pissed on. Literally. Or you could think of it this way. How would you like to be made up every day of your life only to be messed up in the same humiliating fashion, day after day after day? It's like a mother taking great care to dress and primp her child, then after the child gets home from school, the mother rips off his/her clothes and throws them in a pile on the floor and says "See you tommorrow."
In any case, I hope everyone gets a good night's sleep. But forget that business about looking underneath the bed for monsters. The bed is the monster. Sleep tight.
Oh wait a minute. I don't think I answered the question. Crap!!
posted by A Contemporary Bunkshooter @ 10:07 AM,
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Seed: Would You Be Mine? Could You Be Mine?
About this time last year I went through what, in retrospect, was probably a midlife crisis. I had started a walking program covering about 4 miles or so a day and that gave me a lot of time to think. As one prone to moderate depressive episodes brought on by too much thinking, this was a dangerous endeavor, but the health benefits were there, so on I trod. A few months before Katrina, it hit me that we were running out of oil and how the hell was I going to get to work from my home 20 miles away. It was taking me over an hour to cover four miles and even my math skills could inform me that I was looking at a five hour walk each way, or a couple hours on a bike. And that was assuming that I could survive the roving gangs of brigands and highwaymen which would likely accost poor me on my way to work. I realize how incredibly irrational that sounds, but I like I said, my mind gets away from me sometimes. And after all, I was practically raised as a survivalist, so to me the irrationality did not immediately sink in. It did get worse later after Katrina, but this post is about something else, so I won’t go there.
So, we had to move. There was no other way. It was actually quite easy to convince myself of this venture. I literally swallowed something bilious every morning when I pulled out of the driveway to make the 20 mile trip as a lone commuter. Our next-door-neighbor even worked in the building next to mine, but we couldn’t carpool because his workaholic hours were too frequently incompatible with mine. I hated the too-big house with its cavernous ceiling. People drove too fast on the main thoroughfare. All the cars in our ‘hood were identical and most of the houses. I felt like my soul was literally being carved out by some unseen reaver who was selling it on eBay under the moniker soulman666.
Oh, and the streets ran red with Republicanism. YHWH and I aren’t really political types and we never do signs in the yard, but in 2004, we let C.F. Kats put a Kerry sign in the yard so as not to discourage any burgeoning activism and do some ‘stand up for what you believe’ training. So, on Halloween night I hear some kids approach in the pitch black, but before they ring the bell I hear a strident twang belt out, “Git over here! They’re Dim-o-crats!” To be honest we had so many foreign trick-or-treaters hit our neighborhood, I’m not positive she was even one of ours. I figured, you know, at least she could read.
I normally avoid blue-red dichotomies. When pressed I say I’m purple with reddish hues. I know 98% of the people who read this (and 75% of the contributors to this page) are deep blue. I can’t help it though. First of all, my contrarian nature makes me move slightly opposite whoever I’m around. I also have a lot of residue from my upbringing and I can’t help that. I have two mnemonics for figuring out who’s who. #1 – Reds think they’re right; Blues think they’re better. #2 – Reds try to control your actions; Blues try to control your thoughts. Neither is palatable to me, but people that think they’re better than me and tell me what I can and can’t say really annoy me.
Even the people deeper into the subdivision were nice. After a couple of weeks of my nightly walks people in their yards would yell out, “Looking good!” “Keep it up!” “How much have you lost?” They’d see my library t-shirts and ask me if I could help them find some info. If it was raining or there was lightning I got offers of rides home. The block captain routinely asked me for my observations about the neighborhood. We had an Easter egg hunt in the spring; a hayride in the fall; summer picnics; Christmas cookie exchanges; caroling. It was a real community, dammit!
The funny thing was, it was an incredibly diverse amalgamation of neighbors. If you stood on our lawn, in your direct vision you would see three interracial couples, an African, a West Indian, a Mexican, a Puerto Rican, a New Yorker, two Nebraskans, a Filipino, a Californian, and a pride of Texans. At the end of the street was a Japanese family and around the corner a Russian family and further in a Vietnamese family. I and one neighbor and most of the kids were the only Okies. The one thing that bound everyone together was socio-economic status. Or specifically, the price of our houses.
I realized what I was giving up neighbor-wise by moving into the city. I knew I’d have to think more about crime and schools and all the attendant issues that come with urban living. Knowing that I can get along with just about anybody, I was nonplussed by the neighbor situation and I knew that YHWH would be happy moving into a blue zone (or at least a bluish-purple). And she is. There are a majority of Democratic Party signs here. The houses are all stately and different with established lawns, gardens and trees. The numbered streets have fewer than three digits and the named ones are not cutely linked to the name of the subdivision. Rainbow flags fly from a number of houses. And an SUV parked in the neighborhood is likely to be a repairman or a visitor.
So what do you think? Who makes better neighbors – Reds or Blues?
Labels: blues, midlife crisis, moving, neighbors, reds
posted by St. Fiacre @ 4:00 PM,
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Response: Me and Mr. Kravitz
Good fences make good neighbors, or so I’ve been told. But I think a couple of acres and some electric fences would make even better neighbors. Frankly, I’m tired of sitting in the lap of the guy next door. I don’t like rubbing elbows with every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the block. I value my privacy.
As a child, I loved reading the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Isolated by miles of prairie, the family looked forward to taking rare visits to town. Ma would spend her time in the county store, examining bundles of fabric she’d later make into dresses. Laura and Mary would buy a bag of penny candy and explore the dusty streets. Pa would visit with the other men in the shade of store awnings, smoking his pipe and catching up on news. It was a chance to break the monotony of frontier life.
With the busy pace of modern life, I like to think of my home as a retreat. I need a safe and quiet place to unwind. When I head outside to work in my yard, the last think I want is for someone to rush over and gossip about the man who mows his lawn every other day, or the woman with the barking dog, or the couple who leaves a broken down car in front of their house for months at a time, or the guy who plays his music so loudly it keeps everyone awake at night.
Perhaps if I had different neighbors, I wouldn’t be so cranky.
The bane of my neighborhood lives across the street. Mr. Kravitz, as I like to call him. I’ve come to believe he’s somehow installed a tripwire from our front door to his. He seems to know instantly when one of us comes out of the house. He’s out of the house like a shot, ambling across the street to waylay my husband and spend ½ an hour complaining about everyone on the block. So addicted is this man to whining, he once called the sanitation department to complain about a spillage of leachate in front of his driveway. The garbage guys came back out and sprayed it down with Mr. Kravitz's garden hose. Unbelievable.
Most of our other neighbors are great. Like St. Fiacre's old neighborhood, most are Republican and retired. They're friendly; they wave alot; they'll pull their cars over to one side and let you drive down the narrow street; they'll drag your trashcans out of the road on a windy day. They'll probably be the first to drag us out of bed and string us up in the nearest tree when the Christianists stage a violent coup, but until them, I dig 'em.
I’d like to think I’m a pleasant neighbor -– one who cleans up the mess when her dog takes a crap in someone’s yard, who encourages her children to be friendly and respectful, who takes pride in keeping her yard tidy and presentable. I’ll keep an eye on your house while you’re away. I'm tolerant. If his yard isn’t edged and neatly mown, so what? If her dog is yappy, it’s okay (as long as it doesn’t go on all night.) If their kids are a little surly, it doesn’t bother me, but don’t expect me to buy anything from their school fundraising catalog. I just think life’s too short to spend it complaining, and I sure as heck don’t want to be held captive listening to someone bitch and moan about tedious minutiae.
I guess I feel fulfilled by the community I’ve built up over the years: my friends, co-workers, and church. I’m lucky in that I’ve got a handful of friends I know I can always rely on to be there for me when I need them the most. They are the kind of people for whom I’d gladly get into a horse-drawn wagon and travel over miles of potholes, just so I could hang out with them for a couple of hours, looking at fabric, eating candy, and smoking my corn cob pipe.
Labels: community, complaining, neighbors
posted by Adjective Queen @ 2:53 PM,
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Seed: What Has To Do With Labor Day
Growing up, I always thought of Labor Day as a dud. Nationally, it is generally regarded as ‘the end of summer’. In popular parlance you have Rod Stewart singing, “It’s late September and I really should be back in school,”The Happenings' “See you in September, when the summer’s through,” and Steely Dan’s “My Old School.” But in Oklahoma, we already had nearly a month of school under our belts. By the time Rod left Maggie May, we were looking at nine-weeks-tests. Or as my dad always said, school ran from ”after planting ‘til before harvest”, harkening back to the days of good ol’ child labor.
Yesterday, Super Giant Killer made up a research plan for herself. She was curious about Labor Day so at the top of a page she wrote “What Has To Do With Labor Day”. Then she listed four questions she wanted answered:
1. How was it made?
2. Why is it called Labor Day?
3. Was anyone hurt? Did they get ‘get well’ cards?
4. How many Labor Day museums are there?
After I got over the combined shock and pride that she already understood basic research methods without being taught; I thought, “Those are some damn good questions.” I realized that I couldn’t really answer them that well.
I know historically why we have Labor Day, but we seem so far removed from scruffy guys in ill-fitting clothes marching with picket signs today that it’s hard to let it soak in. For one thing we don’t actually make anything in this country anymore. That’s not some redneck reactionary statement from the 80s when we made the great shift from the industrial economy. In those days you’d hear stuff like, “Yeah, they built the Pittsburgh subway system out of Japanese steel!” I didn’t even know Pittsburgh had a subway system. Of course, I know that there are still a handful of light industrial plants around, but it’s not like it was a hundred years ago. And if unsafe mines didn’t collapse every five years or so, you’d be hard-pressed to remember that we even still mined coal. Likewise, I can’t name one person I know who is or was ever in a union. I saw Norma Rae back in 1979, though. I’m not even going to bring up Samuel Gompers.
The prevailing opinion among we climate-controlled sheep is that we don’t need unions anymore; all the problems of exploitation have been solved. Really? I should think the increasing numbers of temps, adjunct professors, and call center folks would have something to say about that. Obviously, I’m not denigrating the work these people do, but these workforce developments carve the soul out work. When it comes down to it, we work because we want to. Fear of starvation is rarely in the front of our minds. Whether we acknowledge it or not, most of us work for self-actualization.
And don’t overlook camaraderie. Soldiers often remark that they fight and kill for their buddies not for Democracy or against Evil. You might sign up for that, but when the bullets whiz past, you pull that trigger because you don’t want to let your buddies down. I have to say that’s true for me. I’m self-motivated to take pride in my work, but truth is I spend more time with my co-workers than my family and a lot of what motivates me is not letting down the team. Temps, adjuncts, and prairiedoggers aren’t allowed that privilege – camaraderie leads to unions and unions lead to, well we won’t go there.
Anyway, despite my frustration with things like Wal-mart union-busting over here while opening a store for the exclusive use of the union lovin’ Communist Party in China, I’m going to do as little as possible this weekend. It’s the least I can do for Woody Guthrie.
So for you all, “What Has To Do With Labor Day?”
posted by St. Fiacre @ 2:00 PM,
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Response: How's that for a Labor Day celebration?
I can honestly say that everything I know about the designation of Labor Day would fit into a Dixie Cup, which is why I'm glad I can count on St. Fiacre to give me a brief history lesson, gently pointing out dates and key figures of interest without shaming me into thinking that I wasted 4 years of college getting nominated to the Heart Pal court and seeing how many times I could get my picture into the yearbook. (It helped to be friends with the editor.)
Labor Day joined Memorial Day and New Year's Eve as one of those holidays my parents looked forward to only in that it was "a great excuse to stay inside." Mom & Dad, never mistaken for 24-hour party people, would don their pajamas or faded housecoat and pad around the house all day. I don't remember a single picnic, backyard barbecue, weekend trip, or get-together. I guess the combined efforts of working three jobs and raising four children was a bit much.
At least Labor Day falls at the end of summer. As kids, we'd try to cheat the onslaught of darkness by turning on the porch light, dragging the Big Wheels out of the garage, and whipping up and down the street. Our Labor Day celebration consisted of crushing the hordes of tropical roaches that poured out of the sewers in their nightly forage for food. There was something oh so satisfying about the sound of their crisp brown shells crunching under the plastic tires.
Secretly, I admit I sometimes think of Labor Day as a legitimate reason for reflecting on the only real labor I've ever done: giving birth to my children. Even then, I feel like I cheated. I opted to take drugs as soon as my doctor gave the okay. As I puffed, panted, and moaned, I focused on the fact that my efforts would result in a child who would eventually grow up to take his place in the vast network of workers who have made this country great. Laboring under the watchful eyes of husband and nurse, and just before a wicked shot of Demerol, I got a small glimpse of hell. And if that contribution to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country won't allow me entry into the brotherhood of workers, nothing will.
posted by Adjective Queen @ 9:17 PM,
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