To Sleep, Perchance to Dream (Bill Shakespeare)

Tonight my son and I will sleep (yeah, right) at a sleep clinic in a children's hospital. My sleep talking, sleep walking, shower taking while asleep, thrasher, turner, midnight oil burner, wake up exhausted son.

He takes after me. We don't "do" sleep easily. It's something we chase and it is not readily caught. Once we've got it pinned to the ground we duke it out and thrash around uneasily. We tend toward sleep apnea on my side. And we have both types: obstructive (low palette, fat tongue - would make a great singles ad) and central (brain doesn't show up for work and tell you to breathe). Grizzly Adam's side gets restless legs. Our poor son dove head first into the shallow end of the gene pool.

So tonight, naturally, he will not exhibit any of those aforementioned behaviors because they will be watching. And we all know how that goes. He'll have the best sleep of his life.

Not I. I am being relegated to a chair in his room. He will sleep lying down and I, presumably, will sleep lying up. And why I must be right there, every moment, in the room while he's sleeping, I have no idea. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for staying with your kids for just about everything. Hey, I HOMEschool for Pete's sake. But when he was three, and in the same hospital, they told me I could go home and they would take care of him. Of course, I didn't go home. I slept in a chair that laid down. But now that he's 13, I have to stay with him in the full-and-upright-airplane-crash-death-defying position?

Well, that's just the way it is. He and I have pulled our share of all-nighters. What mother hasn't? I'm just spoiled because I thought when I weaned him we would now sleep through the night. And we did. Five years later.

So here we go toward another "Night of the Living Dead." Maybe I'll try to find a shower, like my son, and go lay down on the floor of it and sleep. When some tired, naked janitor steps in and turns on the cold water to wake himself up, I'll know it's time to go home, or go blind.

Copyright 2009

Follow the Yellow Brick Road (or me!)

I have watched Feedjit bringing in some of the most fascinating places and people. I am truly grateful. If I keep posting things that entertain or interest you, may I ask a favor? Would you consider signing up to follow? Even if you're not one to leave comments, and not everyone is, you can let me know you're hangin' out with me by following. It would be MUCH appreciated. It's not hard. Just look to your right and you will see an option "Follow This Blog" above the little group of photos. It just takes a minute. The more followers I have the greater visibility it gives me and helps me to get my work out there.

Thank you for dropping in and for caring. And for all of those already following? A very sincere THANK YOU!! It means so much.

I hope to repay you through a contest or two. If I can hit 75 followers I will have a rockin' contest that'll be worth your while! You all are the BEST!

With Love,

Robynn

Punxsutawney Phil and Gopher Guts

Don't you just hate those days when a gopher has a death grip on your shoe and you can't launch him off no matter what?

I am thinking of gophers today since it's Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, officially sentencing us to more cold weather. I'm in California. If it gets any colder in Los Angeles it'll be summer. Winter never fully arrived in some parts of our state. If you're in London, what with the blizzard and all today, you probably think Phil is a bloody genius and wish we would swap him to you for Madonna. Frankly, I think we should leave things as they are. I don't know what you ever did to deserve Madonna but hey, she's yours to keep. She says she wants to go back to New York now that she's gutted Guy Ritchie. If I was NYC I'd hang out the "No Vacancy" sign.

But speaking of things you don't want, I'm glad our gophers aren't as big as Punxsutawney Phil. Your leg could get a cramp trying to shake them off. It was hard enough trying to dislodge an average sized rodent.

When our house was being built every gopher in the neighborhood waged war with the encroaching humans. The gophers were tough and big and carried small semi-automatic weapons. One afternoon, we pulled up to our house to check the progress and the Godfather met us at the curb. He stood up and stuck his chest out. Grizzly Adams, my husband, yelled and stamped his foot in a show of brutal authority. The gopher clutched his heart and staggered, fell down laughing, then leapt to his feet, possessed-red-eyes flashing, and buried his Bucky-the-Beaver incisors into the toe of Grizzly's sneaker.

My husband is no Jackie Chan but he's got pretty sophisticated ninja moves when vermin are attached to his lower extremities. He whirled and kicked and jerked and whacked and sprinted down the curb, still sporting two long teeth and a pair of beady eyes, and that wasn't even counting the gopher. I very helpfully ran along yelling, "Get him off! Get him off your shoe! Kick him! Fling him!" These helpful utterances offered him valuable insights that might not have occured to him otherwise. But it didn't matter. When the rubber hit the road, it did so with the thud of vibrating gopher flesh and there was no sign of retreat.

As I looked around wildly for a stick or missle launcher, Grizzly gave one last massive kick. I watched our miniature nemisis sail through the air as though shot from a cannon. With a final show of dominance he stuck the landing and dusted himself off, glaring down the road at us. I always hoped he was the one my cat laid at my feet several years later.

Kitty Baby made it her life's mission to divest the neighborhood of this evil element. She relished her job. It wasn't enough to merely kill the things. She felt if you could not enjoy your work there was no point doing it. She frequently showed up in the backyard circus playing "Flying Trapeeze," in which she would throw the gopher and then fail to catch it on the other side. This provided hours and hours of great cat fun. When she grew bored, she would skin them and lay them out on the front porch for the rest of the rodent clan to view. In her spare time she made jaunty little hats for herself out of the leather.

I like to think she was avenging me from a childhood attack.

When I was seven I walked to second grade by myself everyday. It was about two miles and that was a lot of time to think up hair-brained ideas like how great it would be to catch a gopher in a paper bag. The thought first occured to me when I spotted a furry brown thing scooting along the ground one day. It was my foregone conclusion, as it was when I saw any animal, that it was lost, desperately lonely, and would undoubtedly die but for my timely intervention. And then there were the show-and-tell possibilities. No one ever pulled a wild rodent out of a sack. I was sure to be popular.

The next day, with brown lunch bag firmly in hand, I set out for school hoping my gopher rescue would go off without a hitch. As soon as I spotted him I dumped my lunch and closed in. He saw me and sat up. I lifted the bag for rapid capture. I was successful except for the fact that I had caught him by the teeth with the fatty part of my ring finger. He was firmly attached. I screamed bloody murder and ran like my tail was on fire. He wasn't the least intimidated. I shook my hand, my arm, the earth on which I stood. We were one.

I think he gave up when I entered the third grade.

Supposedly I never contracted rabies. But I have raged around and foamed at the mouth a few times to the point that the shed and being shot have been mentioned in my actual presence.

Which reminds me of the time I had a feral cat plastered to my head via teeth and claws and actually did get rabies shots. But that's a story for Halloween when my booster is due.


Copyright 2009

What?? The Steelers??

Oh MAN. But the party was fun! That's it. Brevity. You probably won't get it again.

Typing Type

Did you know you might have a typing style? Neither did I.

During a highly scientific research project I didn't know was taking place, my husband and daughter informed me I type in very different ways. They made this announcement public yesterday at an informal press conference. It was all news to me. No one listens when I talk but they pay attention to my typing? Why aren't I writing them letters? Loudly?

Apparently, I sometimes type 700 miles an hour (or Mach 1) pounding out each word so hard and fast I can be heard as far away as Paris. Frankly, I am incredulous. If I yell my loudest that the dishes have not been done yet, absolutely no one in the whole house, in any location, can hear me at all.

At other times, I am told, my typing is tentative, quiet....a staccato ritardando (I am not swayed by this fancy-schmancy vernacular - anything with the word "retard" in it is an insult).

Well, I can explain these two phenomenons easily and there was no research necessary.

First of all, if I get an idea I have to type really really really really fast before it leaves my head because then I would.............I would..........I would.........I'll get back to this.

The quiet parts are me editing the loud parts. Or searching the data banks for something fresh. Do you ever feel like you only have a 100 word vocabulary and you just keep recycling them in different ways? Okay, you're right. 100 words is hyperbole. I'm stuck at 50. (Koko the gorilla knows 1000 sign language words. Where is she when I need her?)

But there you have it. If you're a writer, a blogger, an emailer, or someone with an extremely boring life, listen to yourself type next time. Or have someone else listen. When you're done, look over and ask them what they perceived. They will most likely be in a coma. Take this opportunity to vigorously and loudly recount to them all the chores you want done. They won't hear this either.

Copyright 2009

Jason McElwain - Gotta Love This

This has been around for a couple of years but a sweet friend of mine posted it on Facebook today and I thought it deserved a look if you've never seen it.

I want to make it a priority in my life to believe in people, to encourage the best, and to never let the naysayers get me down (even though I KNOW they will, which is okay, because I always need material and they're wonderful to write about!). But this kid, THIS kid trumps life's tough cards with a royal flush. Thought you might need a "feel good" moment today as well. A little love from me to you.

Observational Twitter 9

Idiom:

"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." Proverb of unknown origins

Axiom:

"People who live in glass houses should shower at the gym." Robynn Reilly



Copyright 2009