Cheap date

After getting up early on Saturday, I really made up for it on Monday. I haven't been sleeping very well lately for a variety of reasons, from late-night thunderstorms to cats walking on me, but mostly because I tend to have "restless legs," which I've had my whole life. Sometimes it's worse than others, but lately it's been kind of bad, and also one night last week I had one of those horrible leg cramps that require you to jump out of bed and hop around on it, scaring the cats and generally making a fool of youself, but it hurts so bad you don't care.

And this one hurt so bad that now, even three or four days later, the muscle still hurts. So in order to get a good night's sleep Saturday night, I took a pill. Not even a real sleeping pill, but Elavil, which my doctor prescribed to help me sleep on the nights when my legs are bothering me. I think it's actually an anti-anxiety drug, but he said they don't prescribe it much for that because it tends to make you sleepy, and boy, I can attest to that.

I stayed up way too late on Saturday, and by the time I went to bed it was nearly 2:00 a.m. I took the pill about 1:00, went to bed, and didn't surface until nearly noon on Sunday. And even then I could have stayed in bed, but I hated to sleep away the entire day and forced myself to get up. I was groggy for most of the afternoon. I suppose one of the reasons that things like that hit me so hard is that I so seldom take them. Drinking's the same way -- if I have one drink, I'm likely to go home and fall asleep. I'm an extremely cheap date.

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Saturday

The older I get, the more elusive sleep becomes. I can remember when I was living in my first apartment, I would sleep all day on the weekends. I can vividly remember waking up, turning over, and going back to sleep multiple times, and sleeping past noon.

Now it seems if I wake up early in the morning, it's almost impossible for me to go back to sleep. Sometimes I can accomplish it, but less and less. This morning Bob got up early to get ready to go play in a golf tournament, and I dozed while he was showering and dressing, and I tried to go back to sleep after he left, but I just couldn't. What I probably should have done was take a book up to bed with me last night; if I had been able to grab a book off my nightstand and read for a half hour or so in bed, I might have been able to go back to sleep.

It doesn't matter, really, but it just seems like a shame to me to get up at 7:00 on a Saturday, just like I do during the week. Oh well.

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Cloudburst

It started raining hard last night as I was driving home--one minute it was just sprinkling, and the next there was thunder and lightning and rain so heavy that I thought I was going to have to pull off the highway and wait it out, except that it was raining so hard that I was afraid to try to change lanes. It was coming down so fast that it didn't have time to go anywhere, so I was also driving through huge puddles, afraid that I'd hydroplane, or that the water would get up into the engine and flood the car.

But nothing happened, and I got home safely. I went out again to pick up Chinese food, and the sky looked like this:

It's been raining pretty much non-stop today, too. It was sunny in the morning, but by the time I decided to leave the house, around noon, it had clouded up and started sprinkling. I stopped at Panera Bread for something to eat, and while I was in there it started raining about as hard as it had last night, so hard that if I had walked outside to get to the car, I would have been drenched. I got a cookie and another cup of tea and waited it out, then dashed to the car when there was a short break in the rain.

The next stop was the bookstore, and I ended up staying in there longer than I had intended, too, because the clouds opened up again and I didn't feel like splashing my way to the car, although this time I did take the umbrella in.

So I really didn't get much done, but I didn't have much on my list anyway, so it worked out okay.

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Snippets

(I walk into Dave's office wearing the sweater I'm knitting on one shoulder, trailing a ball of yarn behind me.)

Me: "See what I'm knitting??"

Dave: "What is that, a sweater?"

Me: "Yup."

Dave: "They have those in stores, you know. Do you need some money?"

I got an email from Yankee Candle Company over the weekend saying that they were having a Buy One / Get One Free sale on selected fragrances. I love Yankee candles, but they're way too expensive to pay full price for, as a general rule. So I went to the store on Saturday, and picked up two big jars and two medium ones, getting them off the big display in the front of the store that said "Buy One / Get One Free!"

I checked out, and the clerk rang up the candles, putting in the "Buy One / Get One Free" code (I'm stressing this for a reason). I paid, and as she was wrapping the candles in paper and putting them in the bag, she said, "You got a great deal! It's almost like you got two for free!!" Um, yeah. Almost like that.

Bob and I went out for ice cream a couple of times last week. It's fun going out at night and doing something simple like that, but I told Bob that we couldn't go out for ice cream every night, or we'd weigh 300 pounds. He said he knew that, but he liked going out together, and I suggested going to Sonic and getting diet limeades, so that's what we've done the last couple of nights.

When we're at home, he's usually upstairs in his office either on the computer or watching television, and I'm usually downstairs either on my computer, or reading. So it's kind of nice to go out and drive around and talk and listen to music and look at the stars. Tonight we went to Sonic for our limeades, and listened to Paramour, an album by a band called Deadman. I've been listening to them a lot lately, and thought Bob might like it, too.

I've been listening to them, and to The Silos a lot lately. I seem to be in some kind of an alternative country mood, or something. Bob says the music I listen to is sad, but I don't really think of it as being sad, I just like the sound. However, I did read a review of one of The Silos' records--I can't remember if it was this one or not--that said, "Not for the clinically depressed."

Bob and I had tickets to see Marc Cohn in Lawrence tomorrow night, but I got an email from Ticketmaster saying that the show had been postponed and would be rescheduled. We were disappointed, but decided to hang on to the tickets and see if we could go whenever they set a new date, if they do. There was no indication of why the concert had been postponed.

I just happened to be reading Google News tonight and saw this news item that apparently never made it to CNN, which is the news site I generally read: Singer Marc Cohn survives being shot in head. I guess that would explain it.

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A walk

The weather finally broke a bit, and it was under 100 degrees when I got home. We went out and picked up burritos at Chipotlé, brought them home and ate (Bob in the living room watching Stargate, me in the dining room reading Undead and Unappreciated, which I picked up a the library on the way home).

After we ate I decided to take advantage of the cooler weather, and went out and walked a couple of miles. I would have stayed out and walked longer, but I had to go to the bathroom, and there wasn't really any alternative to coming home. I've stopped in at Wendy's before, but they frown at you when you don't buy anything to eat, and home was closer, anyway.

I might have even gone back out, but the sun was going down and it's probably wiser not to be out walking around after dark. That's the main reason I got a gym membership, anyway--Bob didn't like me out walking after dark, and by the time I get home from work, it's already getting late. It stays lighter in the summer, of course, but lately it's been about 100 degrees, and not at all pleasant to be outside. I'm just trying to mix it up a little, to alleviate the boredom of walking on the treadmill at the gym for miles. I said something about it the other day to Dave, and he said, "Don't they have televisions?" Yeah, they do, but they're invariably tuned to "The Real World" or something equally obnoxious, so I try not to pay attention, and just listen to the iPod.

Which served up a nice playlist for me:

Love Is Hell - Ryan Adams
Shotgun In Your Dreams - David Knopfler
Your Ghost - Damien Rice
Dreaming's Free - Ryan Adams
Vampires, Mummies and the Holy Ghost - Jimmy Buffett
Angel - Adam Ant
Poison and Pain - Ryan Adams
Trouble - Shawn Colvin
For Once in Our Lives - Paul Carrack
Every Ship Must Sail Away - Blue Merle

Hm. Poison and pain and ghosts and mummies and trouble and hell . . . And it was a really good playlist!

I took pictures.

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