A New Woman

It’s funny what a twenty-five degree drop in the weather will do for you.  Ok, maybe not for you, but for me, certainly.  It puts a spring in my step and a smile in my heart.

Or not.  Let’s not get too carried away.  It does, however, dial the crankiness down a few dozen notches, so that’s beneficial for the people surrounding me.  Man, I tell you, I was heading straight into crazy cat lady territory, and it wouldn’t have been pretty.

It’s now in the middle of the night.  It’s a nice fifty-four outside (I had the sliding door open and a living room window open).  My ankles and feet are somewhat numb, and my goosebumps have goosebumps on them.  In other words, I’m a contented woman.

There is a problem, though.  I am fully awake from the nap I took earlier, which means that going to bed is probably useless.  Yet, I don’t want to totally disrupt my sleeping pattern.  Oh, who the hell am I trying to kid?  I have no discernible sleeping pattern.  Yes, I prefer to stay up until two or three in the morning, but I can’t always do that.  I always feel strange going to bed before one, except for that really bizarre three-month period after visiting England in which I went to bed before ten and got up by five.  That would be ten at night and five in the morning.  I have done it the other way around, so I just wanted to clarify.

I have heard that one should follow one’s biorhythms when it comes to sleep and that nobody is inately a night owl.  Well, let me politely say, that is a bunch of horseshit.  One of my earliest memories is of me stuffing a towel in the crack under the door after being put to bed so I could turn the light back on and read until midnight.  I was seven or eight at the time, and my parents never knew.  

It probably didn’t help that I had thyroid problems, which messes with one’s sleep as well.  In addition, I like the night.  I like being awake when everyone else is sleeping.  I feel a solace that doesn’t happen at any other time.   In the middle of the night, sometimes, my mind is still.  It stops chattering at me and allows me the gloriousness of–nothing.  It doesn’t happen very often nor does it happen for very long, but I truly appreciate it when my mind STFU.

To that end, I have to be doing multiple things in order to distract my brain.  Whenever I am on the computer surfing or writing, I also have music going–or Keith or Rachel or Jon or Stephen.  I am tabbing from window to window, reading from my favorite political blogs as I type my blog entries.  When I watch TV, I have to be reading a book, playing a game on the computer, doing a crossword puzzle, or exercise.  I can’t eat without doing something else as well.  That’s in part because of my eating issues, but it’s also to quiet my mind.  

I think the fact that my mind never stops is another reason I dread going to sleep.  The presumed outcome (or goal, if you will) of sleep is to feel refreshed and renewed upon awakening.  Now, I know that many people don’t receive those benefits, but sleep seems to have the opposite effect on me.  The more I sleep, the worse I feel.  I stayed up for over sixty hours straight once (on purpose), and around the thirty or so mark, I felt great.  

Hm.  Yet another way that I am a freak.  My brother and I have this running joke.   He will create an ad on the computer for his business (realtor), and then ask me what I think of it.  If I say I like it, then it’s gone.  Why?  Because anything I like will not appeal to the mainstream audience–which is his aim.  It’s funny, but it’s true.  On Balloon Juice, there is a discussion over Chris Isaak.  Personally, I don’t think he’s attractive or talented.  The majority of the commenters vehemently disagree with me.  There is also a band of fierce Terry Pratchett fans.  They are trying to convince the rest of us to read Terry Pratchett.  I tried Mort which was a light, enjoyable read, but nothing more.  I like dark and twisted.  They said I needed to work my way up to Night Watch, which is one of his darker books.  My friend, Natasha, who has most of his books, said that all his books are pretty much light and enjoyable.  

I don’t get pop culture for the most part, and I am half-embarrassed that I don’t like what other people so clearly dig.  It makes polite conversation a bit difficult when I have no interest in seeing Star Trek, the zillionth incarnation of the series.  In addition, I don’t watch reality television at all, and I don’t like either the Stones OR the Beatles.  I don’t like Hollywood movies, and I would rather pull out my toenails one by one than try to read The DaVinci Code.   I started the sucker three or four times, but I never made it past the third page.

What I do like, indie films, preferably foreign indie films, preferably foreign indie films that star Alan Rickman, preferably foreign indie films that star Alan Rickman in the nude–sorry, I got distracted there.  What I do like:  indie films such as Japanese Story; folk pop music such as the Saw Doctors; Asian American books such as NP by Banana Yoshimoto.   These things are not easily accessible for the majority of the mainstream.  Nor, as you know, am I religious, married, or with children.  That bars me from another hefty chunk of society.  

I once joked about starting a group of me, but it’s not so far from a joke.