10 Minutes

I slept about 10 minutes last night. Granted I did it about 100 times, but only at 10 minute intervals. I hate it when that happens. Simba started it by whining to go out around 1:30 am. I couldn’t really be upset with her. Her whole routine was turned on its ear when the snow started three weeks ago; then came the holidays and people coming and going; then more snow. She’s in a total doggie twilight zone.

But after running up and down the stairs with her (I’m thinkin’ we might want to include a couple of ranch style homes in that house-hunt…) it was toss, turn; toss, turn, barely hearing the new silent humidifier as it blows a steady warm mist in Mr. Man’s face so he can breathe thru his allergies. The silence keeps me awake. O, how I miss summer… that big, old-fashioned black fan humming in my ear… For now I’ve got my Miami Sound Machine on my side of the bed tuned to an orchestra of chirping crickets to lull me back to la-la land. (It really has nothing to do w/Miami; it came from Bed, Bath & Beyond ~ I just dubbed it the Miami Sound Machine.) But the crickets just weren’t doing it for me last night. Toss, turn; toss, turn. My hip is making its presence known and I start wondering if all that moist air being pumped into the room 24/7 not only makes it impossible for our daily bath towels to dry and leaves a slight film on my reading glasses, but might also be aggravating the bones in my hip.

By 5:00, after the alarm has gone off three ~ yes three~ times, I open my eyes. And once you do that, you know it’s all over. The alarm wasn’t for me; it was for him. But it’s really kind of a mute point now. So, eyes open I start thinking ~ I want to drop Karen a note; I need to get back to Deborah; I want to check in w/Shirley; I need to IM Amber if she’s online… And then I started to smile and a little chuckle formed somewhere in the far reaches of my brain. Not close enough to actually make it out my mouth, but it was there. Once you start to see the humour ~ or at least the interesting part ~ the day is truly beginning.

I was thinking how all of our conversations, our sharing, our connections that take place in cyberspace are not all that unlike that of the coffee klatches, the bridge games, the telephone conversations our mothers had in the 50’s and 60’s. It’s just that now we don’t always know what Mabel looks like or exactly where Betty lives or maybe what Ethel does for a living and it helps to know how to type fast. But the friendships can run just as deep, sometimes deeper. Sometimes it’s easier to open up and show who you are in space ~ and sometimes there’s a comfort zone that comes with distance. Or maybe that’s just the writer in me. Well, that and one can espouse philosophical ramblings and share innermost secrets whilst sporting Nick & Nora flannel ‘jammies w/pink flamingoes and Airstream trailers on them. But I can tell you, I have laughed harder, learned more, had my brain tapped a little more and cared more genuinely with women I’ve met online than I have with a lot of women I’ve known in “real” life.

That’s why this whole worldwide web thing fascinates me. I’ll never understand how it works ~ I mean literally ~ and I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know how to build the clock; just tell me what time it is. But it certainly has made the world a smaller place. I’ll never forget how amazed I was the first time I saw a photograph of flowers – cosmos, I believe – blooming in a backyard garden in Japan… the same cosmos that were blooming on my patio. It suddenly was abundantly clear to me that we are, indeed, all more alike than we are different. And how can anyone NOT see that? We all came from mothers; we all love our children; we all love beauty; we all want happiness and health…

I won’t get up on my soapbox now; it’s too early and I don’t have the energy for that kind of sermon.

Besides, my 10 minutes are up.