10:21 a.m. - 2002-12-28
Slip Sliding Away
It snowed last night - at least in my end of town. My Dad said they only got a bit of sleet. He is doing fine although he is still spotty and itchy.
Something odd seems to be occurring though and I don't know quite how to describe it, other than to list the anomalies I'm witnessing. On Christmas Day we had a very large "honour guard" of geese escort us part way across the city. They were flying in their regular formations, but sort of backstroking their way across the heavens. Trouble was that they were here at all - they should have gone south over a month ago at the latest. I haven't been able to sleeep at all the past two nights. There isn't the sick, kicked in the gut feeling I tend to get when something bad is about to happen, nor is it that rare tingling that occurs before something really happy occurs. It is more like the rush of adrenaline that tends to swamp your system when you know there is some major event about to take place where one has some significant responsibilities to execute quickly and in sequence. Even my bio, circadian, and diurnal rhythms all seem to be disrupted. I feel like I'm freezing and I can't get warm, my sleep pattern is all in disarray, I have trouble sitting still, I don't want to eat, my dreams are very "busy" and bizarre, and I'm even getting zits. My second son gave me quite a nice barometer for Christmas. I set it up when I got home that evening. Since then there have been two occasions when a very big storm seemed imminent based on its reading. That's how it feels too, but no such thing. Maybe, given the behavior of the geese and my body rhythms, something is altering the magnetic North Pole in some way. It would explain the continuous displays of the Northern Lights that has occurred the past couple of months too. This is also the peak of the sunspot cycle. Maybe it is just a combination of everything converging at the same time. Restless.
My youngest son and I were mulling over a real name for Miss Kitty. I suggested the Mandarin word for Jade - spelled yu and pronounced yew - because of her eyes. They are a translucent pale green with a bit of gold around the iris. Very disconcerting to wake up to in the middle of the night. My son liked that but thought it was a bit too short - why not add in the colour black to signify her main colouring. The word for that in Mandarin is hei pronounced hey. Hei Yu pronounced hey yew. Well, I liked it and she answers to that all ready - as in "hey you get off of that counter". My son didn't think it was so funny. He chose to call her Arum instead - I'm not sure why. Arum is a type of lily but it is also a genus of plants that are both very powerful herbal medicines or poisons depending on how they are prepared. In Latin it means "robin" as in awakener. Let's hope she characterizes the latter. I'm going to have to confiscate the catnip sock she got for Christmas though - she is wired. The other night she decided my stair climbing wasn't aerobically challenging enough. She stalked, chased, nipped, and generally did everything she could think of to get me to move faster and in different ways up and down those stairs. My own personal trainer, with kibble as her fee.
My youngest isn't acting his normal responsible self either. Last night he and a buddy went to see Lord of the Rings together. No problem, except everything they planned went sideways. Each was to board the bus that goes straight to the theater at a certain time, from their own stop. My son made it but his buddy didn't, so they missed the 7 pm show. Tried to purchase tickets for the next showing at 8 - all sold out - so they bought tickets for the 9 pm one. Remember this is a 3.5 hour movie. Neither I nor his buddy's Mom owns a vehicle - we both have had to do the single mom thing on our own and cars were never a line item in our budgets. Since they didn't call until after they bought their tickets, I told them to grab a cab home from the theater(very short trip)since we couldn't count on the fact that the busses would necessarily be running and it was too late in the evening for kids their age to be walking - the police take a dim view of it. Besides, late on a Friday night with the first real accumulation of snow on the roads during the "festive season", there were too many risk factors for them to walk across the area to the bus stop anyway. Got a call at 1 am. "We're at the bus stop, because Eli wanted to walk a bit - could I call a cab for them." Cab companies are not thrilled about third party calls late Friday night at the best of times, but especially not when the address, per se, is a bus stop. Fortunately, the dispatcher was in a good frame of mind and they weren't too busy, so he allowed me to talk him into it. 1:30 my son walked in the door. Everything ok? Well no, Eli got out of the cab at the strip mall at the entrance to the community (a half block from his home). He wasn't eager to go in yet. Do I call to check if he got in ok or wait until the morning. Our community is fairly safe for walking in, but even so! Anyway, I'm glad I had the big Boxing Day Crossword puzzle our newspaper publishes to work on last night - kept me distracted enough to work through it all calmly.
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