What Was I Thinking

No, no, nevermind me. It's something that will seem funny in about a half of an hour. I am in the throes of writing papers for this degree, and since nearing bedtime, want to avoid caffeine in anything or I won't sleep. Yesterday I had trod the aisles of a health food store Only Because the pet store wanted four bucks for less than a tablespoon of winter wheat in a bag of potting soil. Cats love grass, and mine have been a little oogy-foogy lately with stomach toss-ups-- if it starts with one, it usually runs through the lot of them. A helpful thing to do is plant wheat grass which can be found for maybe 70 cents a pound at the grocery. Put it in brightly colored packaging with a happy cat cartoon on the front, and you can charge four bucks and up. Not in my world. I trot over to the health food store in the next block and find two pounds of the stuff much more reasonably priced.

While looking and listening to fascinating ideas held by organic nutritionists ("There's a raw food Thanksgiving at Merge")(blech), I see a box of catnip tea. Yippee! I love catnip tea, and used to make catnip jelly for my toast. It comes home with me, I plant the wheat kernels, and get busy on this paper. Now it is tonight, and I want to wind down but also am dying Dy-ing for a cookie, which I haven't any on purpose. The solution is tea, and at this time of the evening, non-caffeinated is necessary, perfect for breaking out the catnip tea while working on the laptop.

I brew a cup, scalding hot in a favorite mug, and head back to the desk where I am working. Tap tap tap away on the keyboard, and there's a tail, a big swish tail coming to visit, how nice. Kai leaps onto the desk. Another tail comes by, and Steve Pickles is on the desk also. A third tail enters, and crazy-crashes into a nearby box; Snowbelle has arrived. They are undulating back and forth, stepping on keys, and if a meow could be a bark, this is it. They are barking short meows, and it becomes so clear as Kai loops a paw towards the hot catnip tea. She tries to stick her face in it, and I have a problem in that I cannot have my tea sit quietly as the desk is crowded with three agitated cats.

They know where I keep the real stuff, so we traipse out to the cupboard and all the cats including the two who weren't part of the pillage get a dose of catnip leaf, gathered earlier in the year. I am not paying pet store prices for something I can pick for free. I bribe them with their drug of choice and gallop back to the laptop for a peaceful two minutes. Yet the aroma from the tea still attracts them after they have downed their portions, but it is a much less frantic plea except for Kai, whose paw is putting great effort into snagging what is rightfully mine. At least to my way of thinking. When combining writing a master's project with writhing tails batting one's face and paws running figure-eights atop the Mac, it is easy to lose it. No door to shut them out, no shelf to stow the hot tea; I could only drink it quickly and be done with it. I will have to hide the soggy tea bag in the refrigerator, or face consequential late-night rowdyism with the wet bag dragged out of the garbage and torn apart maybe in my bed, their favorite place to hide things. Whee.

I'm calmer now. Maybe the catnip kicked in. Time to feed the fish and turn off lights and laptops. I am hitting la hay. Everyone has had their fun, beat each other up, and are now washing their dainty selves. It is cold outside, and all of us want blankets to make us happy. Another day has come and gone. Poof. Wah. Tired.

Bless your hearts, what else could we want? Fun, a fight, and then a snooze. Sounds like a few family gatherings on my mother's side. Tuck under then, pull the kivvers up to your chin. Frost is on the pumpkin, rambling vines sink to earth, the last of the harvest is brought to the barns. Old Earth is getting ready to sleep, we can too. Good night, good night, quiet tails.

People Who Smell Like Bacon

Once upon a discussion, I sat next to a middle aged man. We were perched on folding chairs in an audience for a telecast of academic conversation, stifled by the heated stage lights and closeness of elbows. I was taking notes on the laptop, and he leaned over to ask a question whereby a sudden updraft of warm air from the floor brought the unmistakeable aroma of bacon to the fore.

I realized: it was his maroon sweater that smelled so delicious, I mean, So Delicious. The warmth of the studio became a kitchen, a Sunday kitchen for bacon and sizzling fry pan aromas somewhere in the middle of a cold day. Bacon was for weekends, for slow good morning breakfasts with toast and eggs and orange juice, coffee and the paper. Saturdays were usually rushed affairs, full of errands before the next day when most shops used to be closed. That was why you could take your time on Sundays ago, because nothing else was happening until Disney came on in the evening, after Lassie.

I don't think he understood the effect his sweater had; I wanted to bury my face in his midriff and inhale. I sort of kept up the conversation so that each time he leaned in, I could smell him. Sweetly, innocently, it just joggled the bacon pathways in my brain. The presentation began, and we went our attentive ways.

So, the other night I sat next to a woman who usually dresses in layers of foofy clothing. What? What? My gosh, she smells like bacon. She did. Must have fried something up for a quick supper, or it was left from the morning, but for goodness sake it was a weekday and who cooks bacon for breakfast when you have a job? It did not have the same effect on me, since well, she is also a smoker and frankly, a woman; her hair and clothes were permeated with stale cigarette vapors over the delicate bacon aromas, but yet the bacon-o-meter sensor levels were high enough to establish a reading.

When frying bacon it pays to wear an apron, for even with a screened cover over the pan, microglobules of sizzling deliciousness will invade clothing fiber, the pores of your skin, and cling to fuzzy sweaters. I am only recommending this for my own sanity for if you smell like bacon, I may hover like a hummingbird over a feeder. Really, I have better self control than that. Most of the time. But a man who smells good to begin with, especially with a starched shirt over that and then a sweater with baconness, it's like human catnip.

On myself, I can't stand it. Seems thick and cloying. But then, that's a good thing. I don't cook it or eat it that often, and am shocked and dismayed that some everyday markets are charging up to six dollars for a pound of store brand with a streak of lean so thin it looks unhappy. The price of pork didn't zip up that high, so what gives? Bacon is a mainstay of flavor and used to be a cheap supper; tuck a rasher into a grilled cheese with tomato, build a BLT, begin a chili, add to the vinegared joyful mess of German potato salad, let it draw the family into the house on a chilly day. Pancakes? Waffles? Better with bacon. I rest my case.

Long day, short night. Time just flies by. Aches come and go, come and stay. I will turn gratefully in tonight, after typing up a paper for class. The wool blankets have come out, and the cats burrow under during some of the chiller October midnights. Sleep well, sleep safely, put your worries in a jar and let the subconscious sort out the nonsense. Good evening, good night.

French Toast

Watching Mr. Pasquette walk the wire between two towers took no time at all if you saw it via the broadcast news. However, (toot horns), I could see half of it live, right out my window and was so immersed in his concentration that time slowed to a molluscan dimension; a cautious, tendril of a foot balanced his weight forward in meditative time; I willed him to stay up, move deliberately, to grow roots into his line. It took forever. He stopped, knelt, tipped a hat, saluted. An animated dot, he shortened as he knelt. As he gained the safety of the ledge, I saw him scamper down the terraced levels supporting the towering Statue of Liberty replicas, a mannikin upon the horizon in the sky. I clapped, not loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Thank you, Mr. Pasquette; you stopped the sun and inserted your own version of time like a wedge between o'clocks. It was fun to see you. Au revoir.

Hours. Sleep, please stay.

Noah's Ark

Last Sunday, I drowned any spiders, dust mites, and microscopic prokaryotes, thus liberating the saprophytes that feed on dead remains and so produce bouquets of spores. English: I flooded the back end of the god-blasted apartment with an inch of water and spent a good part of the next day ripping up carpeting. Plastic crap-ola indoor outdoor carpeting that was the color of cheap canned dog food and stapled into the asbestos linoleum on top of once uponna time foam underlayment. No one was hurt, no cat became ill from padding through pools, and I promised the universe to swear less if I got my job back while sopping up buckets with a miracle sponge that I will bury with a marker when it's ready to go I respect this sponge so much, it saved my giblets. Just the kind of sponge you use to wash a car, an oversize floppy synthetic thing, but it held water like Scarlett clinging to the fantasy of Ashley Wilkes. I am grateful, O sponge; particulars are not being revealed even if you promise me a box of kittens.

Much was thrown away, my mom's old easel, a table missing a leg but it was such a good piece of furniture, a wool rug so plain and warm, a mirror in a gilt picture frame from grandma's time, and some books. It was horrible, I still ache. This scenario was compounded by the mystery of job status which was not found out until that Tuesday, when I went to the online site and saw the words. I had gone to work to set up the classroom, yet waited to get home before checking--if the state hadn't said okey-dokey, I didn't want to know in front of anybody.

Well, it was, I am, and sleep has returned. There is still an anxiety, but it's wearing down, ebbing away from a clawed grip to a tolerable elbow in the ribs. It will be all gone soon, remaining sensation being the breathless shock that things worked out. Lord, I need to get to the ocean, to feel the salt waves rocking against my shins, pulling the tension of human life on land back to the beginning of shelled things. Since I redigidooed the car insurance policy, there will be nine hundred dollars that I don't have to pay them. This will buy a lot of cat food and maybe get a vacation in there somewheres. Oh baby.

Going off to push some more furniture around, found a black circular dial telephone which only needs a split adaptor to hook up. Tried it out in the modem and yippee, using a finger to turn the dial felt familiarly weird, and sounded like fifty years ago. Come on over and call someone; maybe grandma will answer, but that is a story for a cup of tea.

Oh sleep. Tomorrow is college library research for a Monday paper, but tonight, that beginning-of-fall cool night that requires heavier bedding will lull daylight into memory. Oh, most of our joy occurs in day, but there is the respite from being good enough that night comforts and loosens a little, if only to dream or fall into dark, quiet worlds of slow time. Rest and recover, let the subconscious wend through thought and desire, let the body sink gratefully down to innocence. Good night, good night, water, star, carbon, flesh. Love to all.

I saw that, get back here.

It is 10:30 a.m. by the world clock on the laptop; breakfast has been cleared and papers are electronic and silent but for the soft clacking of a million keyboards. I sit on the couch edge, typing missives and apologetic requests for words documenting efforts to higher ups and departments.

The apartment remains cluttered by years of a somnambulant existence, enchanted by shells, books, drawing pads, cats, and grandmotherly things. I remind myself that I have only awoken recently, and cannot undo years of gathering things that made me feel temporarily loved in a few months. Health not quite good enough to sit down and stop was compounded by graduate papers due at college and by demands of a job that requires a sixth sense and a mind two steps ahead of the clientele.

I noticed falling last summer, when the words coming from the instructor made no sense and it took too many times to understand a page of text. Stress, older, blah blah blah, suck it up, get busy. Now things are better, moving forward; even if I get half the brain I once had, it would suffice, but resolving organic growth does take its sweet time. Oh people, be patient with each other, you never can know what mischief will impede anyone's synapses like a burnt squirrel in the phone wires.

So, signs. What do you think? After becoming religious, non-religious, then religious again after the marriage ended, then non-religious when they wanted me to go to "Divorce Class" before I could take communion post-annulment post-divorce, then a little too Run-With-The-Wolves spiritual, then a little uh-oh over the edge I saw a bird sitting on this street sign so it means blah, then, for heaven's sake get a grip and work towards your education, next, walking around in a stultified state from the two anti-depressants, tranqs, and Ambien that someone-who-is-not on my Christmas List put me on, then the resurrection from sleep disorders, and the current issue of my freaking muscles melting away from a recipe of statins (warning: do not take), snake venom blood pressure med and diuretic heart palpitation circus meds; after all that, I believe in signs. Tippy-toe like. Maybe.

I journaled an occurrence offline because it was too out of the ordinary and really, some of us have these things happen, and others end up in a cupboard next to the once-a-year Bell's Poultry Seasoning brought out Thanksgiving mornings, that happy little yellow box with the bright blue and red turkey on the front, since 1867. You want to know more, email me.

But did it just happen again? Printing out a hardcopy document for this evening's class, the computer produced an image on the paper mimicking the previous you-didn't-hear-it-from-me there she goes again. A picture that had been stored in the photo files. No document, but so similar to what was experienced, I paused, then laughed with the silvery angels. I mean, it did come out as a laugh, but maybe it was more related to nerves and last night's sleep interruption when Snowbelle got caught behind a dresser and needed rescuing in the middle of nowhere nohow. I think it's my Grandma Ida, and that's all I'm admitting publicly.

Letters have now been written and faxed at this 11:30 a.m. hour, the BTF rep said that the Albany connection would put it through if she got the letter due course. Now I am waiting to hear if it gets there, if the right people press the right buttons after lunch, perhaps.

A dear friend and I were supposed to drive up to Newfane for a short trip to visit a shop where another friend sells her knit purses. It will happen in autumn, closer to leaf colors and tannin in the atmosphere. Tonight I have a class at the college, parking better after four o'clock when the younger crowd leaves. The master's project begins this evening, I am ready. Listen for a royal wahoo when the soft mists begin to gather over the Lake and day is done. No cat is getting caught behind a dresser this night.

Do a good turn today, I know you do every day; these actions create a family and a sense of social belonging which is all that anyone wants. Day to night, moon to up, sun to down. We dream.