If this is aging?
I’d like a rebate. Or something.
I had the worst case of insomnia last night. After sleeping from 10 to 1 am, I jerked awake and stayed that way until well after Chris left the house at 5 am. At one point I stared at the ceiling while the bed shook because the cat was giving herself an extended tongue bath, and the room filled with her wet/dry smacking sounds, and I worked hard to resist the urge to throw her out the open window, through the screen. It took every ounce of energy, and as wired as I was, that was a lot of energy.
I probably should have gotten up and packed CDs or made myself a birthday cake, but I didn’t want to keep anybody else awake. Instead, I ruminated on the way my life suddenly seems to be in fifth gear again, on how I need to be rested enough to go from zero to ninety in ten seconds, on how impossible that will be if I am unable to sleep. I thought about how this family is going through some major changes, and how I need to be the glue that keeps it all together, but how I don’t feel sticky enough in the right way. Night sweat sticky, yes. Glue sticky, not so much.
I said to myself, “Thus begins my fortieth year.” I said it out loud, hoping that Chris would hear me and make sympathetic cooing noises at me from across the great divide where Lila had her head jammed into his armpit, while I shoved her feet away from my ass crack every four minutes.
Chris is not a cooing kind of guy. He’s more of a grunting, “I’m awake over here too, and I have to get up in a few minutes to move giant bars of steel around and turn them into useful things for big machines, so quit your complaining,” kind of guy. He’s more of a “Well, I know how to tire you out baby, let’s move this to the other room,” kind of guy.
Unfortunately last night I was an “If you touch any spot on my itchy skin, or think for one minute that I will be able to rise up out of the miasma that is my headache, or be able to ride the waves out of the stormy, churning sea that is my growly, sore tummy courtesy of the garlicky sweet potato and black bean burritos we ate for dinner, well, no. I won’t. So quit thinking about it,” kind of bitchy, older than my age, useless fart of a woman.
Happy Birthday to me!
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
May 10th, 2006 at 11:37 am
happy birthday!
i’d coo for you, but somehow i suspect that a complete stranger cooing at you isn’t going to be anywhere near as effective as Chris. so i won’t. i’ll just leave you with the thought that somewhere in the world, there’s people wishing you a very happy birthday, and a great fortieth year. and that your skin will stop itching and you’ll get more sleep and that Chris will suddenly magically become more sympathetic.
May 10th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
happy birthday sis! happy 40 wonderful years of a beautifully lived life.
I miss you loads and wish I was there watch you blow out the candles.
may you give yourself many gifts this year, but let one small one be to remember that you don’t have to be the glue every day all the time b/c it is simply too much to ask of one person. the family is the glue. the love is the glue. the trust and honesty and faith of your family in your family is the glue. it is up to us all to be a little sticky every day.
happy sticky birthday itchy bitchy girl
May 10th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Happy Birthday, old lady ;o)
May 10th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Wow- 40 is a big one! I hope you are having a blast today and that you have a smashing birthday!
May 10th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Happy birthday! I hope it was great!
I get insomnia too, and I strongly recommend getting up and reading. When else do you get the luxury to just sit and read? It’s a treat. May as well do something nice for yourself since you’re up against your wishes (and reading makes the brain sleepy, too!)
May 10th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Well, happy birthday! We all feel like this time and again. And, pressure with the glue thing… I second your sister. I get major heat rash when the weather changes, and have been woken up for over a week now. I’ve found it helps to run cool water over the itch and then rub baking soda on it - or a cool baking soda bath if it’s all over itchy. Eat cake!
May 10th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
I’m confused . . . didn’t you just turn 39? Because I just turned 40 and I know that I am much more of an old fossil fart than you. And wasn’t my serenade lovely? I was going to get Julio Eglasius but he had bat mitvah to play . . .
May 12th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Happy belated, my dear.
You are one FOINE woman in her thirties. Just sayin’.