Perhaps it is my over stimulated brain, anxious for tomorrow's events to happen and play out in real time as they imagined. Maybe my body has been over rested from being on Christmas break, with feet that don't know what to do with themselves but to itch for a walk downstairs for one more drink of water. And of course when all you're thinking about are a countless random things, you begin to wonder what it all means.
I spent half my day at the emergency room, awaiting news of whether or not the wheezing and shortness of breath I had been battling over the past week was bronchitis, pneumonia or worse. Urgent care shot me up with a steroid and ordered me to the ER, I refused and got progressively worse. Delcina finally harassed me into going, and I was undoubtedly thinking more of the cost, time and possible bad news more than getting myself better.
Despite all that, I read some more of a book I had been reading "God's Politics" (and interestingly enough, quite a bit of information I didn't know about the Israel-Palestinian conflict), people watched (Del and I had some bad fun out of the sound of someone vomiting) and talked like husbands and wives do when their isn't a task involved or being interrupted by phones, kids' requests or the television. We left the ER, made a Kroger visit an ended the night with a banana split. It's good to be sick, indeed.
Over the past week, the inevitable wait for sleep to sweep over me like a smooth blanket never arrives. There's the thoughts about my family. Sometimes the distance from some of them is a blessing unto oneself. I always tell my mom that I love coming to Houston now because I see the best of my family. The vacation time, stress-free from work. The cousins playing together, grandma's making my favorite meals, eating out at the places I can't get here. And we've all grown up some too. As a teenager, I was too full of pride to listen to any advice. Lost and mean spirited. Who the hell was I to appreciate what I had on front of me?
And then a sleepless night turns into music, and jokes you've made during the week, and quips you want to remember the next time you see that one person. I end up thinking about women I shouldn't be thinking about, and creative ways to get my kids at school to be more than creatures of their environments. Then eventually, my thoughts turn dim and I try to black out everything (sometimes I have fun shooting the Devil with a shotgun, or chopping him with an ax and telling him to get out of my head). When I was a kid, I used to squeeze my eyes shut hard enough to see glittering spots of white and yellows. It's never really black you see when you close your eyes. That would be the end, wouldn't it? I see cloudy impressions, sometimes distant faces, those freaky optical illusion pictures that seem like two faces at a standoff, or is it an hourglass? Sparkly, faded renditions my synapses shooting fireworks.
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