This Fish Needs A Bicycle

between the lines and out of bed

I was in bed before 9:30 last night. You’d think I’d be rested.

After her emails had sighed between lines, ‘I need a drink and some friendly company,” I’d met Kate for dinner and a drink at Cedar. It’s a dark and unremarkable bar, but over the last few months, it’s become a retreat of sorts for a handful of us. There’s a table near the front where some patrons lifted Jen into the air on one of the old, wooden chairs. There’s a table dead center of the main aisle, toward the back, where I sat nursing bleeding feet and crying into a borrowed tissue. And a bit to the left, one where Kate and I sat talking about parts and wholes and nervous stomachs.

Like I said, I was in bed before 9:30 last night. But I woke up several times before my alarm annoyed me out of bed at 7:15. I woke once at 10:30, when Sir Hal had (quite loudly) gotten himself stuck in the hall closet. Once at 12:something from frustrating dreams about work. And then again at 3:30, when the pipes began clanging signaling a working boiler. I was awake enough then to make hot chocolate, email my father and read for a bit. Then back to sleep until trip to the bathroom at 5:15 and one a little after 6:30.

This morning, I am bone-tired, shaking my fist at the sky (or fluorescent light covered ceiling), wondering, What’s a girl gotta do to get some real rest?

I totally need to invest in a sensory deprivation chamber.