Good Morning.
I didn't sleep well last night for some reason. I didn't have any caffeine, not all day long, and I didn't eat a heavy meal late. I didn't watch anything particularly stimulating on TV and I didn't argue with someone on the phone. I thought I was tired and would fall asleep within minutes of climbing into bed. Not so much.
The first problem was the temperature of the room. I decided it was cool enough to open the window and I turned on the fan that I use all year long because it's white noise. If I don't have it, the heavy silence drives me bonkers. The dog settled down on her blanket next to the bed fairly quickly after patrolling the house for fifteen minutes. She was sound asleep before I'd finished praying for all the people who are sick and all the people who have died and all the people who live in war-torn countries and all the people who are hungry and cold and unloved. The room was warmish but I didn't want to get up and turn on the air because I'd disturb the dog. The sheets also didn't help. They were microfiber, soft to be sure but a bit clammy, I thought. Cotton, the regular old white kind from decades ago, would have been better. I needed to get some old-fashioned sheets, I decided.
My mind just wouldn't shut off and hopped from this worry to that question like a dumb grasshopper. It might be time to change out the red geraniums at the cemetery for some fall mums but they couldn't be butterscotch, my favorite color but Jamie didn't like butterscotch pudding or anything else butterscotch. A couple of movies passed through my brain - the chariot scene in Ben Hur and the fishing scene in On Golden Pond when crusty old Norman Thayer and Billy finally catch Walter. I thought about the fact that I was out of stamps and would have to go to the post office. I thought about the woman who did my blood work at my annual checkup last Monday and was off to the state fair this weekend because her granddaughter is showing her 4-H goats. I thought about my son who replied to my question "Are you going camping this weekend?" with this statement: "No, the schools decided, in their infinite wisdom, to schedule the President's Bowl over Labor Day weekend." The President's Bowl matches up the high schools and his daughter is in the marching band. That led me to ponder the upcoming bond vote for a new high school. The three current ones - Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt - are bulging at the seams and a fourth, presumably named Jefferson to round out Mount Rushmore, is definitely needed. I will vote for it. I will glare at the old people who grump about it while they have their afternoon pie at Perkins.
The neighbors down and across the street have one of those lanterns on a pole in their front yard, but it's not a soft, low-light lantern; it can be seen from the space station. If I sleep on my preferred left side, or try to, the light shines through a window in the living room and sails up the hallway into the bedroom and my face unless I draw the curtain which I hadn't done, of course, so when the dog finally decided to get a drink around two o'clock, I bolted from my bed and fixed the curtain. By that time I had also dislodged the clammy, microfiber top sheet at the foot of the bed so I retucked it. The temperature had cooled off so I stayed with the open window and nodded off perhaps a half an hour later, but not for long. I dreamt that I was at John McCain's funeral in Phoenix but was asked to leave the church when I showed up in a banana colored pant suit with a long, linen, multi-colored vest sort of thing. I woke with a start, never got back to sleep, and finally rousted myself, doddered across the hall to my office, and here I am.
My physician asked me last Monday if I got seven to eight hours of sleep at night. Absolutely, I told her.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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