COLORADO OH COLORADO

I'm at my oldest daughter's for Thanksgiving, and I am especially appreciative of some things:

1. I do not have to get up early in the morning. In fact, I don't have to get up anytime at all. I don't have hungry animals barking, climbing in my bed, or neighing incessantly until I drag myself outside to separate flakes of hay and horses.

 

2. I do not have to be any place at any particular time. I don't think of my life as regulated by the clock, but I am aware of feeding times, church times, meetings and events. Here there is

 no such need. The television cable they use even allows me to watch ANY television show at ANY time - sweet!

 

3. I am not in any way tempted to try to do any Black Friday shopping.

BLACK FRIDAY

I do appreciate the fact that the term "Black Friday" was originally coined by the police in the late '60's to describe the headache of traffic, pedestrians and shoppers.

 

Good luck to all of you who are out there braving it.

LET A FOOL HOLD HIS TONGUE AND HE WILL PASS FOR A SAGE

I bit my tongue this morning.

To "bite your tongue" has become an expression, used you might say something that would hurt or be offensive to someone, but instead remain quiet or murmur a courteous platitude instead.

But when you actually bite down on your tongue, the pain is... well, exquisite.

I can understand why - the tongue is a highly sensitive organ, holding many many nerve endings.

But God, why did you place it so close to my TEETH?!

TRYING TO RETURN TO REGULAR POSTS

MORNING HAS BROKEN

I will never, EVER, be a morning person.





I do NOT, repeat, do NOT awake cheerful, happy and ready to jump out of bed.

Almost every morning I float unwillingly through fat, heavy layers of sleep and claw my way into conscientiousness, fighting the almost overwhelming desire to simply sink back into sleep.

I awaken bleary-eyed, sullen, silent and slightly furious at my night being removed. My body aches as I roll out of bed and stumble to the bathroom, where I actually begin the slow and painful process of actually gaining perception, keeping my eyes open for more than a quick squint, dragging on clothes, taking my  morning meds.


And part of that laborious process is taking the dogs out IMMEDIATELY for a walk to avoid  their relieving themselves on the carpet.

With this time of year, that small task involves putting on sweatshirts and gloves and dog parkas and leashes and hats and extra big boots.

And going out into biting wind, chill and the overwhelming darkness of country miles and miles removed from any sort of man-made lights.

But then I get outside, and my eyes adjust to the starlight as the dogs begin their daily trek south to sniff out coyotes droppings, chase the morning rabbits, and try to talk me into a longer walk than our usual half mile.

And then I see the heavenly constellations in all their glory.

A fast and fleetingly shooting star burns in and out of sight in a second.

I hear the birds begin their morning calls.

And I witness the slow creep of dawn as it gradually peeks over the eastern horizon.



And gosh by darn it, I am actually glad I am up at this ungodly hour.








But, honestly, it's mainly because I can go then back to bed.

SUPERLATIVE ABSOLUTES

I get impatience with misuse of language.

I admit I am not a master of English - perhaps simply an admirer from a distance.

But we seem to have lost the idea of what an absolute is.

Everything is "the very best" (which is redundant, isn't it?) - we advertise with "the newest/greatest/cheapest.:

And my personal most irritating use - "never in history...." or "for the first time in history..."

5,000 years may be the longest time we have preserved records of historical events. And most of those from an extremely limited number of uncovered artifacts.

Yes, we may have some writings - some pottery - some drawings on a cave.

And from these we make HUGE leaps of imagination to "well, then obviously EVERY one(meaning the one person or group whose art/writing/craft we have uncovered) from this period of time (documented by an dating technique discovered 1950) were doing / making / exploring /living such-and-such."

Without considering that hey, maybe we DON'T know what everyone else WAS doing. We don't have a record of the people in Australia - we don't know what the Chinese were doing at this same time - heck, we don't know what this dude's next-door-neighbor was doing!

We probably only have the record of a man, since most historians seem to be male, and most records appear to be patriarchal - so at least HALF of the population, the home-making, family-rearing, nurturing and generally peaceful half, is not represented at all.

So we get an account of the ONE person or group whose writings/art/interpretations survived the floods, chaos, fires and war - and make a generalization from THAT?

Okay - let me cease from my panting rage - and calmly and gently suggest that perhaps we do NOT know much of anything.

So we might want to admit this, especially in our use of absolutes.

Now please, allow me to lock myself up in a padded room for a few hours to calm down.

SLEEPING ON A RAILING

I have used sleeping medications ever since a hysterectomy  removed my ability to sleep longer than 2-3 hours at a time as well as my uterus.

But recently I went cold turkey to see if I could find rest on my own.

I am currently in the ideal situation for this - I live alone, with two dogs who are house-broken enough to make it through the night (with Cissy only leaving occasional offerings in the living room) - I do not have scheduled work hours - and the Internet is always working at 3 a.m.

I live in a rural area, with my nearest neighbor several acres away - and I have black-out curtains in my bedroom.

Surprisingly, it only took a few nights to settle into a routine.

I do need to go to bed right when I feel sleepy, even if it is unfashionably early, such as 8 p.m. (thank goodness for the DVR that can still record The Walking Dead, Castle, and Jon Stewart).

When I get up to pee around 2 a.m., I must go right back to bed.

And I must get right up when the dogs begin nosing around right before daybreak and take them on a longer-than-usual walk.

With my two daytime naps, I am getting MORE sleep than I was on the medication.

Pretty nifty, eh?







And the nicest thing about all of this - waking up alert and fairly cheerful.

But still - let's go take a nap right now, okay?