Sleep: an Inn for Phantoms

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I’ve never been particularly good at sleeping, and when Fuzzy is away for business my sleep patterns get even more skewed from the usual, fairly nocturnal schedule we generally keep. Why? Because in addition to being a reluctant sleeper, I also have a vivid imagination. Even when Fuzzy is home I’m often caught in dreams that are strange, disturbing, or just plain scary, but when he’s away the phantoms come out to play.

illustration-of-woman-sleeping-on-white-sheets

To be honest, I’ve always been easily spooked at night. I’m not afraid of the dark – I actually prefer a room to be as cool and dark as possible when I’m trying to sleep, but that state of mind that comes just as I’m falling asleep leaves me stuck in a sort of personal Twilight Zone, albeit one without Rod Serling’s narration.

The thing is, it’s not every night, and it doesn’t seem to have a trigger. Instead, I have a kind of…eerie mood…and when it strikes I know I’ll be lying awake, quietly freaking out over every little sound. As a teenager, I would combat these moods either by reading until the sun was up or I literally fell asleep with the book in my hands (whichever came first), or by turning on the radio. Many nights were spent listening to the Larry King Show on AM radio, and I still remember some of the interviews. (That’s also the show that introduced me to the song “Talkin’ Baseball,” which remains a favorite even today.)

Larry King hasn’t been on the radio in decades, so on those nights when Fuzzy is away and the eerie mood descends upon my brain, I turn on NPR, which usually means that I go to bed hearing the BBC overnight service and wake up to Morning Edition. Except, I’m not really hearing any of it, because I keep the volume just at the edge of being able to discern individual words.

I’m not sure why the radio works for me, or why it has to be talk radio, specifically. I mean, music wires me, so I know why that doesn’t work but… Anyway, my current theory is that hearing live radio reminds me that there is a living world outside my head, and therefore the mental ghosts don’t have real power.

Of course, sleeping with three dogs in my room (at least two of which are usually in the bed with me) is helpful, as well. If I wake in the night, convinced that I heard a sound, I watch the dogs. If they don’t react, I know there’s no threat outside of my imagination.

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows. ~Gaston Bachelard

Unconscious Mutterings Week 499

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This past weekend was my birthday, and it was quiet, but lovely. I turned 42, and wrote a column about it over at All Things Girl.

Meanwhile, I’m revisiting Unconscious Mutterings:

I say… And you think…?

  1. Course :: description
  2. Delusion :: of grandeur
  3. Silly :: putty
  4. Intrepid :: explorer
  5. Candle :: shadow and flame
  6. Entrance :: fee
  7. Voracious :: reader
  8. Taste :: and style
  9. Bobble :: gaffe
  10. Horror :: movie

Leo Rising

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coffeetime-615

The mid-issue update of All Things Girl went live this morning. My column can be found in the Everything Girl section.

It’s called, Leo Rising: Thoughts on August Birthdays and Turning 42, and here’s an excerpt:

By the time I was married, I had grown to love my late-summer birthday so much that I declared August to be my month. Oh, I’ll be gracious and share a few days with others who have the luck to be born in August, too, but as I said, those people form a select few. Even better, like me, most of those rare, special people with August birthdays are also Leos. I mean, I’m in good company: Lucille Ball, Madonna, Martha Stewart, Linda Ellerbee, and Julia Child are all August Leo Women, and the Men of August include Steve Martin, Garrison Keillor, Matthew Perry, and my junior-high crush, Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Leos then, and especially August Leos, really are born to roar.

You can read the entire piece here.

Thursday 13: Summer Dreams

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Miss Rio

As much as I complain about the summer weather in Texas, there are certain parts of summer I love. As a kid, my summers were spent at the Jersey Shore; now I pretty much live in my pool from mid-May through mid-September. In any case, I haven’t done a Thursday-13 in ages, and since I’ve refreshed the blog, it seems appropriate to visit favorite memes.

Here, then, are 13 Things I Love About Summer (Then and Now):

  1. Sand: In my hair, between my toes, and stuck in the folds of damp bathing suits. I was with my Mother in Mexico in June, and my beach bag still has traces of sand in it.
  2. Sea & Ski: I’m pretty sure they don’t make it any more, but those funky green and brown bottles were ubiquitous when I was little. Not only did that sunscreen stay on in water, but it had this indefinable “beachy” smell that I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to recapture with aquatic perfumes for decades.
  3. Noxema: Yes, in previous incarnations of this blog I’ve written whole posts about Noxema, but I love it. I still use it.
  4. Tan Lines: Okay, look, I know you’re not supposed to sun-bathe, and I don’t, I swear. I even remember to use sunscreen (most of the time) but the tan lines I get are from swimming for a couple of hours every day, not from lying around imitating broiling meat.
  5. White Cotton T-shirts: While these are hardly restricted to summer, there’s something about a simple white t-shirt that is instantly soothing. They’re soft enough for sun-burned skin, make tan skin look tanner, and go with shorts, skirts, jeans, or just over a bathing suit. As a kid, my favorite summer “pajamas” were my grandfather’s cast-off t-shirts.
  6. Natural Highlights: Okay, we all know this mermaid hasn’t seen her natural hair color for more than 1/4 of an inch at a time since she was fifteen, but the blonde color being sported this summer is naturally enhanced by the sun. (And I had strawberry blonde/golden brown hair when I was young, I swear!)
  7. Swimming: I am my most creative self when I get to splash around in water every day. I love having my own pool, and in summer, I’m in it for hours every day. On heavy writing days, I do my own version of “interval training” where I write for thirty minutes and swim for thirty minutes all day.
  8. Going Bare: Bare feet and bare faced, that is. I love shoes, but I love being barefoot even more, and this summer, I’m so sun-kissed that I haven’t worn make-up since mid-June, except for a little gloss and mascara. (I do, however, moisturize. Religiously.)
  9. Beach Reading: I don’t generally read at beaches, but I love reading beachy books. Anne Rivers Siddons, Dorothy Benton Frank, Wendy Wax, Nancy Thayer, Elin Hilderbrand – these authors (and others) keep me entertained all summer, in between the books I read for review.
  10. Shark Week: This year is the 25th edition of The Discovery Channel’s salute to all things sharky, and while I have never, ever missed a year, I’m giddy with delight that Shark Week spans my birthday this year.
  11. Summer Produce: Last month, I wrote about watermelon over at All Things Girl but I also love peaches and plums and avocados and fresh tomatoes and berries of every ilk.
  12. Late Sunsets: While I believe Daylight Saving Time has outlived it’s usefulness now that we live in a 24/7 society, I still enjoy long summer evenings. There’s nothing like floating on your back in the pool and watching the first stars come out. (I could do without the mosquitoes, though.)
  13. My Birthday: As a kid, I hated that my birthday was in August – August 17th, to be specific – because my friends were all off on last vacations with their families before school started. Now, though, I revel in my August birthday, because there’s NO COMPETITION. No holidays (well, sometimes Ramadan, but that doesn’t affect very many of my friends), not many other birthdays (September, however, is glutted with them) – it’s MY MONTH. (I share with others, but…only a select few). You’d think that since I’m turning 42 next week, I’d be upset about my birthday, but that’s not true at all. I love celebrations. I love having a cake with my name on it. I take the day off work and celebrate myself. Birthdays are AWESOME!

So that’s my list…what are your favorite things about summer? I really want to know!

Buzz-Kill – Weathering Wasps

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All during the month of June, there was a wasp – I’m pretty sure it was the same one – that would linger in one corner of the swimming pool. I would shoo it away, and it would come right back. It drove me crazy, because it would buzz my head every time I came up for air, even though if I was under water it was happy enough to linger on its favorite blue tile.

Wasps don’t have a terribly long life-span; by the first week of July it had disappeared.

Last week, wasps began turning up in my bathroom, which is perplexing since the only window in that room doesn’t open. Since then, there have been three wasps in the bedroom, and about one a day in the kitchen, though on Friday, when Chris (who is not afraid of wasps and spiders) was away there were THREE on the back door.

Two of them, I eventually convinced to leave the house, through the back door that I slid open, inch by inch. The third was demolished, and then devoured, by Miss Minnie the Pocket Pointer.

I do love a dog who eats bugs.

We haven’t been able to find a nest, but I know there has to be one, and when we find it, those little bits of buzzing annoyance are dead.

Unconscious Mutterings – Week 497

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I haven’t participated in Unconscious Mutterings for months, or possibly years, but I have been a participant (on and off) since the project began. Today seems as good a day as any to play word games. (Though, is it ever a BAD day to play word games?)

I say… And you think…

  1. Rude :: awakening
  2. Leather :: and lace
  3. Headquarters :: lair
  4. Good guys :: endangered species
  5. Blowing :: in the wind
  6. Doddering :: old fool
  7. Instructional :: film
  8. Standards :: and brackets
  9. Eatery :: bistro
  10. Vampire :: bat

Buzz-Kill: Weathering Wasps

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All during the month of June, there was a wasp – I’m pretty sure it was the same one – that would linger in one corner of the swimming pool. I would shoo it away, and it would come right back. It drove me crazy, because it would buzz my head every time I came up for air, even though if I was under water it was happy enough to linger on its favorite blue tile.

Wasps don’t have a terribly long life-span; by the first week of July it had disappeared.

Last week, wasps began turning up in my bathroom, which is perplexing since the only window in that room doesn’t open. Since then, there have been three wasps in the bedroom, and about one a day in the kitchen, though on Friday, when Chris (who is not afraid of wasps and spiders) was away there were THREE on the back door.

Two of them, I eventually convinced to leave the house, through the back door that I slid open, inch by inch. The third was demolished, and then devoured, by Miss Minnie the Pocket Pointer.

I do love a dog who eats bugs.

We haven’t been able to find a nest, but I know there has to be one, and when we find it, those little bits of buzzing annoyance are dead.

Waxing Rhapsodic about Watermelon

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watermelon slices

My most recent piece of published writing is last week’s Sunday Brunch piece at All Things Girl.

Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve been almost living on watermelon this summer. Green Watermelon When I was a kid, we didn’t have watermelon that often, and when we did, it came from a farm stand or the back of someone’s pickup truck. We would take home the huge, striped-green melons, and one of the adults would slice them open as the final event of a summer party – the kind that began with splashing at the beach or in a backyard pool, or even just running through sprinklers in the back yard (be careful near the rose-bushes, you might step on a thorn).

The rest of the piece can be read here.

Rapping with the Ringmaster

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johnathanleeiverson

Ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson | Photo Credit: Feld Entertainment

Until last year, I hadn’t seen a proper circus since I was ten. (Cirque du Soleil is awesome, but it’s not a circus in the historical sense). Then, a couple of years ago, I stumbled across the blog of a man who was (at the time) the Boss Clown of one of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’s train tours. (Ringling runs three tours: Red and Blue are train tours and travel on two-year tours, so if RED is in your city this year, BLUE will be there next year. The Gold tour is a truck caravan, and visits venues too small for a full three-ring circus.)

That experience taught me that clowning is really just another application of the same skills we use in improv: mime, humor, irony, and “yes, and.”

It also made me want to see the circus.

Conveniently, the Ringling Bros. tour comes to my city around my birthday every year. Inconveniently, it took me until 2011 to make it to a show, but it was worth it.

In preparation for my experience, I followed the twitter feeds for Ringling Bros., and for the ringmaster of the tour I was going to see: Johnathan Lee Iverson. His feed is a blend of fan shout-outs, daily updates, and interesting observations about life in the circus and life in America.

I contacted him via Facebook, he put me in touch with the publicity folks at Feld Entertainment (the Ringling parent company) and earlier today, in the newest issue of All Things Girl, he’s our man of the moment.

He’s my favorite interviewee that I did by email.

An excerpt from the piece is below. You can read the whole article here.

ATG: Aside from your existing training as a performer, did you have to learn any new skills in order to succeed as a circus performer, or in order to understand all the different types of performers you work with?

JLI: The single greatest thing you need in the world of the circus is an open mind. Every performance is like an organism, meaning it’s a living thing. No two shows are ever alike. When you are performing with so many performers from all over the world who possess specialty crafts with particular needs, you must have a mind that is braced for the unexpected.