It was just a dream

(Green shoes and holy jeans)

I had a strange day yesterday. I didn't feel like myself. I tried to wake up to work on my project, or at least get online, but I couldn't move an inch of my body from the fluffy white biscuit, otherwise known as my bed.

It took too long to fall asleep Monday night. I read Huck Finn, and talked to a friend, and cried to a friend. He talked about his job. I talked about the contest. We talked for hours, and I finally fell asleep. Woke up and couldn’t move. Too tired. Too mentally exhausted 'cause I actually found time to do a bit of editing on Monday, but now it's Tuesday morning...I hear Baby Girl. I sip coffee. She fusses 'cause I’m sitting on the couch with the cup of coffee instead of playing with her, or going into the office, but Mommy has no work today. We're going shopping! Baby Girl is delighted. I finish my coffee and take another bath and she stands on the tub ledge and watches.

We get dressed and dance to Belle & Sebastian till it's time to leave, to go out to eat, and stuff ourselves silly on shrimp, French fries, ketchup, and root beer from a glass bottle so sweaty it nearly slips from my hand when I pour it.

We go to Wal-Mart. I push the buggy as fast as I can, and she squeals so happy, people look at us and smile.

I buy her a couple of cheap toys. Lots of groceries.

We come home. It's raining. We put everything away and lay around till it's time for her bath. I clean up her toys and her messes in a robotic blur. Finally, she's wrapped up in blankets, and falling asleep as I sing Twinkle, twinkle walking backwards from her room.

In my own room, I take another bath. Three in twenty-four hours doesn't make you crazy; it's a delayed reaction, and your stress is bubbling over. It's making you filthy. Better scrub. Better clean. Better wash and bathe again. Better go to bed so you can wake up and write or read or do something. ANYTHING! But first you got to sleep...

I wasn't sleepy. I wandered around, and wrote for two hours.

It was midnight when I finally crawled beneath the covers. The rain had started back; off and on all day, and into the night, which was now a new day, since it was midnight. I listened as it henpecked the tin of my trailer; the walls and the roof. It dripped down from the gutters onto my window beside me. I closed my eyes, and tried not to think of anything; of writing or reading, the project, contests, deadlines, Baby, outlines, plotlines, characters, overpasses, no sex, no supper, too much bathing, cleaning, no work tomorrow either, and what will I do? I could get online, and write the millions of emails I've been meaning to write. Get in touch with people I miss, and I know they're getting tired of me, always being distant or quiet or not here at all. And the rain gets heavy, and the rain lightens up. When it's light, the gutter sounds louder, and I'm cussing myself, I hate you Ash! Shut the puck up, and go to sleep, you little God damn child, and who cares about your writing, your blog, or what you're doing tomorrow? Why don't you go to a library in another town, look for that book you want to read, and stretch out on a couch and maybe your soul mate will come along and see you on the couch, and ask you what you're up to? Why you're all stretched out? You'll tell him how it was raining, and you couldn’t sleep...I'm pulled from this almost dream by the splish-splash on the window, so loudly now, like an old man's outside, tapping the glass, Please let me come in.

I tell the old man No for fear he'll sneak into my kitchen and steal all the spoons.

I walk into the bathroom and pace about the floor, contemplating another rub of soap on my hands, and no, I'll go to the kitchen and check on the spoons. I wash my hands three or four times. Make a bowl of soup. Sit on the couch and watch American Beauty till it’s four in the morning, and I still haven’t slept.