All Through the Night
I get up at 5:00 am every day to catch the 6:39 commuter train into Boston. That insane wake-up hour gives me time to shower, dress, eat and make it to the train with seconds to spare. Since I’m barely conscious at that hour I prepare everything I need for the morning the night before. Coffee is in the espresso maker, oatmeal waits in the bowl, even the milk glass sits waiting. If I could figure out a way to eat in the shower I would do it. If I wasn’t so prepared I would have time to dress or eat but not both and would probably walk out the door wearing two different shoes.
Knowing that I have to get up so early in the morning makes me a nervous sleeper. Each night I wake up five or six times to check the clock to see how many more hours of sleep I have left. It goes something like this:
6:30 pm: I prepare the next day’s lunch and breakfast. Lunch is always a celebration of the gustatory senses—a tuna, bologna or turkey sandwich. Of course the fact that I eat my lunch running from one thing to another means that I usually have no idea what I’ve just eaten anyway. There have been times when I have asked my secretary if she’s seen me eat my lunch because I have no recollection of doing so. She just sighs and points to the saran wrap filled with crumbs on my desk.
7:00 pm: Having completed all my preparations I head for the bedroom followed by my faithful companion, Snoopy. I grab our special blanket and a cup of tea and we settle in for a couple of hours of togetherness--if that’s what you can call me at one end of the bed and him at the other. He doesn’t want to actually snuggle or be near me, he just likes to know I’m there. I watch some TV and read for two hours until…
9:00 pm: When it’s time for the Snoopster to go for his final outing and me to go to sleep. Yes folks, I go to sleep week nights at 9:00, depressingly early, but if I stay up any later I go around the next day searching for my brain.
9:15: I fall into a wonderfully deep sleep guaranteed to rejuvenate me for the entire week.
9:30: I wake up feeling like I’ve slept for hours only to glance at the clock to see that I’ve been asleep for exactly 15 minutes. It will take me forever to fall asleep again.
9:30-10:30: Toss and turn trying desperately to find a position that doesn’t feel like every part of my body is lying on nails. I look at the clock hoping that maybe I’ve been asleep for hours without know it but no dice.
10:35: Finally fall asleep and manage to stay that way until…
10:55: When Steve lands in bed like a cluster bomb, throwing the covers and tossing himself around as if he were a crepe in a frying pan. He adds a few sneezes and grunts and voila! I am completely and utterly awake and ready to kill my bed mate.
10:55—11:30: Lie in bed dreaming up ways to torture my husband or at least wake him up. How can he sleep so deeply while I’m over here planning his untimely demise? I tell myself to relax and start counting something, anything-- sheep, enchiladas, kittens, to find some sleep.
12:38 am: Finally fall asleep again after having checked the clock at least a dozen times to see if I had just dreamt being awake.
2:00: The snoring concerto kicks in, bass section and all. I look over at mi amore, see that he is lying on his back so I give him a gentle tap on his arm (okay, maybe I whack him a good one but at this point can you blame me??) which is his signal to turn on his left side so that his snores will calm down to snorts and we can all get some sleep. I check the clock once again and utter some words that cannot be printed in a family newspaper.
2:30: The dog decides to meander in and begins to shake, stretch and then lick every single part of his body. The slobbery licks make me so nauseated that I threaten to dismember said animal unless he goes to sleep. He looks at me as if I have lost my mind.
3:38: I look at the clock and see that I have exactly one hour and 62 minutes left before I have to get up at 5:00. I try to count my blessings (enchiladas sure didn’t work) and all I can come up with is that I may be exhausted but at least the snoring and licking have stopped.
4:45: I finally fall into a deep, deep rejuvenating sleep.
5:00 am: My alarm goes off and when I realize that I have to get up I decide to ignore it and go back to sleep. At that point a cold nose pokes itself into my side demanding to be fed. It’s been a long day’s night.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Nerdvana
Nerdvana
A while ago I confessed that though I love Shakespeare, Arthur Miller and Chekhov, at the end of a long, stressful day all I want is a television show that helps me escape. I want to be entertained, taken completely out of my world and, if you can make me laugh, that’s a bonus. So I watch soap operas like Downton Abbey, science fiction like Dr. Who, beloved reruns from the 1980’s, and the occasional new show. Sometimes Lisa recommends programs that she loves but usually I come upon a show as I’m hopefully switching channels.
This year I’m hooked on The Big Bang Theory. Maybe the theme song sung by the Bare Naked Ladies caught me or maybe it was a snatch of scientific give and take between the characters, whatever it was I’m now a groupie. The show is about a group of young scientific guy-geeks who interact with the “normal” girl next door who has more common sense than all of them put together.
The characters have grown interesting. Originally the four guys had no clue how to interact with anyone of the opposite sex (in fact Sheldon had no idea how to interact with anything that had a pulse). Now they are at the point where one of them is engaged and two are in serious relationships. It’s also a kick that one of the actresses, Mayam Bialik, who plays a neurological scientist, is one in real life. Unfortunately I’ve learned more about science watching this show than from my days spent in high school science class.
When Mariel came home last month for a couple of weeks we continued a ritual that we had begun when she was last here—watching my new favorite show together. Last summer I had mentioned to her fiancé, Dan that I enjoyed the program. It turned out that he liked it as well so he began regaling Mariel about the funnier aspects. So she decided to join me to see what the fuss was all about.
So there we were: me, Mariel and Snoopy perched in front of the TV watching the trials and tribulations of Leonard, Howard, Rajesh, Sheldon and Penny. When some arcane bit of scientific information was included in a joke I would ask Mariel for clarification and then the show would become even funnier. But then suddenly Mariel started to laugh for no reason that I could understand.
“What’s so funny?” I asked her.
“I suddenly realized”, she said, “that the reason we like this show so much is because both Dan and daddy are also science geeks!”
I thought for a moment and knew she was right. Both were engineers who preferred to spend their time figuring out a problem with a piece of machinery or a computer to socializing with humans. Dan illustrated that the day that I asked him to download the Indiana Jones ringtone for me. My problem was that I couldn’t find it in the on-line i-crap store and so had no idea how to get it onto my phone. I figured Dan could do it in five minutes.
When I asked he gladly agreed. However an hour later he still had no success. For some reason he had to update my phone, my computer, my entire life before Indiana Jones could be persuaded to play his theme song on my phone.
“Apple always makes easy things difficult!” he told me. I told him that he was wasting his time, to stop trying because it just wasn’t worth it.
“Are you kidding?” he answered. “It’s the principle of the thing now. There’s no way Apple is going to win!”
So he spent the entire afternoon wrestling with that piece of bitten off fruit until finally he got it. Only a true nerd would do that. We liberal arts majors don’t have that kind of insane focus. I once saw Dan spend an entire day staring into his computer doing a homework assignment, barely moving until he finished. Very impressive and very scary!
And Steve? When he was in high school he was nerd captain, or as it was otherwise known, captain of the computer squad. Before that in elementary school he had been on the AV (audio-visual) squad, another geek infested group. Later we found out that Dan had been on that as well. They claimed that it was a great way to get out of class but Mariel and I knew better. It involved endlessly tinkering with machines and that was the very air they breathed.
Steve even had a white plastic pocket protector filled with pens, along with the white socks and black framed glasses to go with it. He was the height of geek fashion. In fact thinking back I guess you could say that he was a pioneer nerd, playing around with a computer the size of a classroom, solving equations with relish and playing the earliest computer adventure game with only a printer to guide his way. He got me caught up in that idiocy as well. We spent months trying to find the keys to various doors and swords to dispatch a never-ending stream of dragons, snakes and trolls.
So Mariel is probably right. We enjoy the Bing Bang Theory because those guys are basically our sweethearts—awkwardly navigating the social aspects of life but still the sweetest, truest guys around. May they live long and prosper!
A while ago I confessed that though I love Shakespeare, Arthur Miller and Chekhov, at the end of a long, stressful day all I want is a television show that helps me escape. I want to be entertained, taken completely out of my world and, if you can make me laugh, that’s a bonus. So I watch soap operas like Downton Abbey, science fiction like Dr. Who, beloved reruns from the 1980’s, and the occasional new show. Sometimes Lisa recommends programs that she loves but usually I come upon a show as I’m hopefully switching channels.
This year I’m hooked on The Big Bang Theory. Maybe the theme song sung by the Bare Naked Ladies caught me or maybe it was a snatch of scientific give and take between the characters, whatever it was I’m now a groupie. The show is about a group of young scientific guy-geeks who interact with the “normal” girl next door who has more common sense than all of them put together.
The characters have grown interesting. Originally the four guys had no clue how to interact with anyone of the opposite sex (in fact Sheldon had no idea how to interact with anything that had a pulse). Now they are at the point where one of them is engaged and two are in serious relationships. It’s also a kick that one of the actresses, Mayam Bialik, who plays a neurological scientist, is one in real life. Unfortunately I’ve learned more about science watching this show than from my days spent in high school science class.
When Mariel came home last month for a couple of weeks we continued a ritual that we had begun when she was last here—watching my new favorite show together. Last summer I had mentioned to her fiancé, Dan that I enjoyed the program. It turned out that he liked it as well so he began regaling Mariel about the funnier aspects. So she decided to join me to see what the fuss was all about.
So there we were: me, Mariel and Snoopy perched in front of the TV watching the trials and tribulations of Leonard, Howard, Rajesh, Sheldon and Penny. When some arcane bit of scientific information was included in a joke I would ask Mariel for clarification and then the show would become even funnier. But then suddenly Mariel started to laugh for no reason that I could understand.
“What’s so funny?” I asked her.
“I suddenly realized”, she said, “that the reason we like this show so much is because both Dan and daddy are also science geeks!”
I thought for a moment and knew she was right. Both were engineers who preferred to spend their time figuring out a problem with a piece of machinery or a computer to socializing with humans. Dan illustrated that the day that I asked him to download the Indiana Jones ringtone for me. My problem was that I couldn’t find it in the on-line i-crap store and so had no idea how to get it onto my phone. I figured Dan could do it in five minutes.
When I asked he gladly agreed. However an hour later he still had no success. For some reason he had to update my phone, my computer, my entire life before Indiana Jones could be persuaded to play his theme song on my phone.
“Apple always makes easy things difficult!” he told me. I told him that he was wasting his time, to stop trying because it just wasn’t worth it.
“Are you kidding?” he answered. “It’s the principle of the thing now. There’s no way Apple is going to win!”
So he spent the entire afternoon wrestling with that piece of bitten off fruit until finally he got it. Only a true nerd would do that. We liberal arts majors don’t have that kind of insane focus. I once saw Dan spend an entire day staring into his computer doing a homework assignment, barely moving until he finished. Very impressive and very scary!
And Steve? When he was in high school he was nerd captain, or as it was otherwise known, captain of the computer squad. Before that in elementary school he had been on the AV (audio-visual) squad, another geek infested group. Later we found out that Dan had been on that as well. They claimed that it was a great way to get out of class but Mariel and I knew better. It involved endlessly tinkering with machines and that was the very air they breathed.
Steve even had a white plastic pocket protector filled with pens, along with the white socks and black framed glasses to go with it. He was the height of geek fashion. In fact thinking back I guess you could say that he was a pioneer nerd, playing around with a computer the size of a classroom, solving equations with relish and playing the earliest computer adventure game with only a printer to guide his way. He got me caught up in that idiocy as well. We spent months trying to find the keys to various doors and swords to dispatch a never-ending stream of dragons, snakes and trolls.
So Mariel is probably right. We enjoy the Bing Bang Theory because those guys are basically our sweethearts—awkwardly navigating the social aspects of life but still the sweetest, truest guys around. May they live long and prosper!
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