napping the life out of me

It's not that my friends are all so amazing, beautiful, talented, well-traveled and accomplished that makes me absolutely crazy with self-loathing. It's that they're so friggin' motivated on top of all that. They get shit done, you know? Done. No questions. No kvetching. Just done. D-Over easy-N-E. Done. And for the life of me, I can't figure out how they do it.

I mean, it seems we all sort of started out in the same place, but even with some vagaries in education and upbringing accounted for, I should still be further up the food chain of life than I am right now. And let me tell you, I had FOUR internships in college! FOUR. I had promise! I had potential! I had a resume!

And rereading that paragraph, it seems to me that at some point in time I had motivation, too.

Apparently, it's fizzled.

I think it's the napping. I think the napping has been the doom of me. I really, really love the napping.

I have a fabulous idea to write about or the kernel of a vision for a painting or for once I'm motivated to clean my house and inevitably the siren song of the nap beckons, trumping the life out of all other activities. I LIVE for the nap.

I'd go so far to say that it's a passion.

Which suhcks. The fact that napping is the one concrete passion I can pinpoint at this point in my life irks the hell out of me. No one ever became famous or built a multimillion dollar portfolio while taking part in sleep studies, for goodness sake! And frankly, having wracked my brain, that's the only "profession" I can think of to satisfy the cravings of an inveterate napper like myself. (Though on the upside, I do meet the man of my dreams on a regular basis. Of course, on the downside, he stays there and sadly he's as likely to manifest himself as a 74-year-old postal worker with eczema as he is Brad Pitt. More likely, actually.)

But I digress.

In search of the answer to wild success and fulfilling achievement, I've done some informal surveys of my amazingly beautiful, well-traveled and talented friends who have fashioned themselves into vice presidents, successful entrepreneurs, up-and-coming actors, published authors, government movers, scientific shakers, happy mothers and thriving wives and there is one glaring difference that that sets these motivationistas apart from me -- lack of sleep.

I actually have one friend who throws up if she sleeps too much. I have others who crawl out of their beds at three and four in the morning to fondle their computers or throw paint at walls or vacuum their living rooms. People are writing dissertations and knocking the kinks out of business plans while I accomplish nothing more productive than finding the cool side of the pillow.

I know you're thinking it: Which came first? The chicken or the depression?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sleep equals depression. She must be depressed. Go get yourself some Zoloft and perk the hell up. Blah, blah, blah. But the thing is, I'm not depressed. I've been depressed. This ain't depression. This is a joy for sleeping. This is an ease of life. This is a lack of anxiety. A peace, if you will, of mind and spirit. And a simultaneous fear of rocking the boat.

But having written that, I know for a fact that I kind of like boat rocking. You meet the best people when treading water post swamping and truthfully I haven't gotten my ears wet in a while.

. . .

My bed's just too comfortable. My pillows too soft. My dog too snuggle-able. And trading all that in for a sleep number bed of nails seems a fool's errand. A fool's errand and yet. . . .

And yet.

des memos from des moines: they fall down in iowa

My cousin Pamela called the other day to ask why I don't write about her in this space. This space that I emailed her about months ago. This space that we've never discussed because apparently she deleted the link when I sent it to her because she didn't know what it was and didn't bother exploring. This site, the one you're reading right now that she hasn't seen fit to read in all. this. time.

"I've fallen! I've fallen on the ice at least twice this year. Why don't you write about me?!" she wanted to know after she finally read the site last week and saw that I'd recounted her sister's fall in the grocery store.

Well, I didn't write about it because I didn't know about it. The truth is, I suppose I could have assumed her fall because A) she lives in Iowa where there's nothing but snow and ice for like three-quarters of the year and so regular falling should be expected and B) because she's Pammy and of all us kids, she spent the most of her childhood in various casts. As a kid she had a hard time keeping her footing and this despite the fact that she spent most of her childhood in the South where there wasn't even anything so slippery as ice with which to contend. Add the ice and she's doomed. So I should have known, but this is a factual site from my perspective and I only take poetic license with the details. Generally, I don't imagine storylines or dialogue. Generally, I sort of, I guess . . . um. . . report. Whatever.

But honestly I wasn't aware of the fact that she'd fallen, because she'd never mentioned it. Lately -- I'd say over the past few months and maybe even couple of years -- Pammy's dramas have been rather more dramatic. Dramatic in the real life, not to be made-light-of real life sort of way.

Here's the thing. Every time I talk to Pamela lately someone else she knows has. . . well. . . died. Seriously. She's had a rather bad and tragic run of sudden deaths in her general vicinity -- friends' parents, acquaintances from church, in-laws. It's horribly, awfully horrible. I'm afraid to pick up the phone to call her these days. I have to mentally prepare myself to face death every time I ring up Iowa. It's practically a mitzvah to do so. And it's not like we haven't had our own share of deaths in our own respective families over the past couple of years, too. But I'm not writing about those either right now. Because it isn't funny. It's kind of raw. I mean there are some stories there, stories worth telling even. Stories that with time I might be able to recount with sensitivity, wit and yes, even humor. But I'm just not ready yet.

And if I'm not going to write about my own personal tragedies, I'm certainly not going to write about the out-of-the-blue tragic tragedies of people I know of only because Pamela happens to live near them. And just because Pamela's sad and feels free to bum me out by sharing her latest so-and-so has died stories (which for the record I'm glad to hear in that I want to be supportive and because I care about her and her well-being and the well-being of those she cares about very much), doesn't mean I have to depress you, too. You, who are sitting at your job which very probably depresses you enough as it is. You don't want to read about people dying this early in the morning, do you? Do you? You don't. So I won't. (On the other hand, I'm not completely discriminatory. I have no problem whatsoever writing about the death of fish. Cori's stories are just pseudo tragic. Not tragic-tragic. And much more appropriate to this site of pseudo tragic-comedy.)

To be fair, Pammy does have a very funny story about her young son pulling the emergency alarm at the airport at like three o'clock in the morning, in the middle of what was arguably the most arduous series of ridiculously delayed and re-routed flights in the history of travel, but it happened a really long time ago and I don't remember the details and this post is already too long and so I'm going to stop.

But not before I say this: Pammy, perhaps you should purchase yourself some cramp-ons for your shoes. Now that I know, I'm concerned about how much you're apparently falling these days. And just so the third sister, Allyson, doesn't call to ask why I have not also written about her, I'll say this: She's very tall, thin and quite beautiful, but she has an out-of-perspective concern about the onset back fat -- invisible to the naked eye, but which is vaguely evident if she happens to contort herself into a backbend which she will do, just to prove she's got it. Oh, that and she's probably pumping breast milk while reading this. Now that's dedication.

baby shower blues

Saturday was one of those perfectly grey and bitterly cold days that are so grey and so cold that they inspire a luxuriant and guiltless sloth. The kind of sloth that involves endless movies and take-out Chinese and the decadent three-hour long nap that upon waking leaves you with the non-too-vague sense that you've been hit over the head with a frying pan. (Hit over the head with a frying pan, but in a good way, of course.) It's the kind of day that might include a hot bubble bath, but more likely involves staying in your pajamas all day long, only rousing yourself to pick at your face in the bathroom mirror for countless minutes after your bladder forces you from your comfortable nest of blankets on the couch. The kind of day that even Fred prefers to spend under covers, only occasionally breaching from their depths for food or to gnaw on the foot of his favorite stuffed duck in a state of peri-catatonia.

It was that kind of day and I was SO excited. I was so excited for about three seconds, as I stretched and yawned, happy in the knowledge that I would be able to spend the day as a weather-dictated recluse. And then on the fourth I remembered. I had a baby shower to attend.

And not just any baby shower. A baby shower that happened to be Outside the Perimeter. For those of you not from Atlanta, people who live OTP are the equivalent of New York's Bridge and Tunnel crowd. Those of us who live inside the perimeter prefer not to cross the boundary that takes us outside of the perimeter lest we catch something itchy -- like Republicanism. Unless that is we're leaving the state via airplane. But even the airport is inside that line. Get it?

And this wasn't just on the other side of the Outside. This was like an HOUR on the Outside.

So rather than luxuriate in glorious lethargy, I was going to have to drag myself out of bed -- BATHE! -- DRESS! -- buy a gift and drive an hour each way in order to spend three hours in between drinking weirdly slimy, chunky punch*, playing ridiculously childish and yet often somewhat dangerous or disgusting games**, (devised, oh I don't know, say, circa 1806), before popping in my earplugs for the requisite high-pitched dolphin-squeal screams that accompany the unwrapping of very tiny clothes and the endless discussion of the perfect roundness of bellies and their comparative sizes to other bellies -- present bellies, bellies from generations past and occasionally even the immortalized bellies***. Anyway, there is never just one belly at the party, ergo they sort of dominate the conversation, much the same way they dominate the female figure at 8+ months.

Mein Gott im Himmel! Save me!

Truth be told, there's never a good day for a baby shower. Even if it's gorgeous out, spring-like and balmy. Even if it's next door or God forbid, in your very own house, it's a chunk of your Saturday spent participating in an event that can only be met with a certain grim determination. That is, if you're single and childless. If you're married and/or a parent it's an event at which you can spend time with people like yourself. So less grim determination. More oh-thank-god-people-who-speak-real-sentences-and-only- drool-when-drunk.

The older I get, the clearer that line becomes. The us and the them. The singletons and the married. The parents and the childless. The gap in conversation gets wider and wider. The common topics ever more narrow.

"What did we used to talk about," my college roommate (recently pregnant) asked the group of us after a prolonged conversation about the relative merits of different breast pumps, whether to rent or buy said breast pumps and the apparent act of abomination known as the "Pump-and-Dump" -- an occasionally necessary evil.

"I can't remember," someone else said.

"Sex and boys," I said, to a chorus of "Oh yeahs!" (Because, since I'm not married and have no children, that's what my girlfriends and I still talk about.)

"Well, if it makes anyone feel any better, I'm hung-over," a new mother declared with a note of pride.

"Me too!" said another, before adding, "Of course, I'm a total light weight now. One glass of wine. . . "

And I had to tune out. Because I'm not married and I don't have children. And I can go out whenever I want. And my body is still my own and pretty much looks like it did in college -- less a little turgidity, plus a few more wrinkles. And as much as I care about my friends and my friends' kids -- genuinely, truly love them even -- I really don't care-care about the details. The same way I don't care-care about the melting of the ice-caps, because it's something of which I have no real concrete grasp. It's important to me that my friends are happy. It's important to me that the ice caps stop melting. But just as I'm not going to measure oceanic water levels the next time I'm at the beach, I don't need the differential measurement of pre- and post-pregnancy nipple circumference. Thanks, anyway.

In the end, I guess it's not the baby shower. It's what the baby shower represents. And as a single girl in her 30s, with each passing shower****, it becomes increasingly clear that finally I'm the one who's OTP -- Outside the Pregnancy -- and there's just no true understanding across the line.

And given that, if you don't mind, I'd really much rather sleep in. *****

---

* Okay, what is UP with the punch the penchant for punch? It's gross. Pastel colored with chunks of slimy, mystery fruit or jello and a skim of froth that typically looks as if it was transplanted from the frog pond out back. And nothing, nothing is worse than an unexpected chunk of bloated banana sliding down the back of your throat. Gack. Listen, punch was designed to distract from the flavor of cheap-ass liquor and without the alcohol, it's just as disgusting, but pointlessly so. Whatever happened to the nice mimosa? The comfort of a Bloody Mary? Heck, the common cup of coffee! I'm coming to your shower. . . at least give me a drinkable drink!

**For example, accidentally let the word "baby" slip from your lips and some ancient auntie is liable to make a screaming dive at you from across the room, practically ripping your shirt from your body with her age-spotted claws in an attempt to unhinge the diaper pin the hostess poked into your collar when you walked though the door. "YOU SAID 'BABY'! SHE SAID 'BABY'! I GET YOUR PIN! I GOT HER PIN!" she'll crow to the room, somehow making you feel suddenly very naked and very stupid and very much like cursing a blue streak at this blue hair whose demeanor is less the genteel old lady and more the street-thug in fake pearls.

It's a GD pin, woman, dial it back a notch!

Or then there's the game in which a blindfolded "volunteer" is forced to sniff a Hershey bar melted into a diaper. Oh. so. not. really. funny.

***A trend -- making a plaster cast of the pregnant belly for artistic display or even practical function. Turn it upside down and it makes a rather nice, if somewhat bizarre, bowl for chips and salsa.

****And honestly, it's been like 35 of them in the past 6 years. Really.

*****I know, if you're a mother or a father of a young child, you'd KILL to sleep in on a Saturday and you've got no sympathy. I know I'm lucky. I feel your pain. But comfort yourself with the knowledge that when you're old you've got a built-in someone to change YOUR diapers. And I'll be hiring strangers. So let me sleep!