insomnia

 well, it's 430 in the morning. I've already been up since 3. i tried to fall back asleep in my leather recliner but it was no-go. so i turned on the lamp to write a haiku, thus:

shopping mall Santa

arrives in a blizzard of

artificial snow.

i thought after that maybe I could drift off to sleep, having accomplished an amazing artistic feat. but no, my spirit was still restless and my legs twitchy, so i turned on the lamp again and went into the kitchen to make a casserole.  we made spaghetti yesterday evening at 5, but only one measly person showed up for it, so i used the leftover spaghetti pasta in a tinfoil casserole dish with canned chicken and canned peas, covered with cream of chicken soup and sprinkled with lots of garlic powder -- it's cooking in the oven right now, and I hope . . . i hope . . .  that when it is done my troubled spirit will be at peace, knowing i can offer it to our neighbors and friends at noon, and that then maybe i can get another hour or two of rest before church.

our church starts at 830, and sometimes amy and i are hard put to make it on time. because we have gotten into the habit of staying up until midnight most nights. watching JAG on DVD. we're on season seven right now. i started out not much caring for the series, but now i'm invested in the characters, especially the cranky admiral.  and when you go to bed at midnight it's hard to be up at 7 to get ready for church.  luckily, they still have Sacrament Meeting here in the apartment building in the afternoon, so if we do miss morning services we can always go in the afternoon.

the casserole needs another 20 minutes, so that's how much longer i'm going to write this insomnia memorandum/memoir.

Amy has been busy with her H&R Block studies for the past several weeks.  she's learning how to do small business taxes. this requires her to read reams of boring detailed studies on small business tax cases and then get tested on them. sometimes she aces the test, and sometimes she has to take them several times before passing. it means a significant pay raise for her, so she's determined to get qualified, even though she gets a bad headache at the end of the day from looking at the computer screen all day.  she is also practicing on her euphonium most every day. she's renting it to buy from a local music store downtown. 50 bucks a month for a year and a half. 

right now we manage to get to the temple each Thursday for an initiatory session. that's about all i can do nowadays, since i need to use the bathroom about once an hour.

i occupy my time with poetry, when there is no paid writing work to do. we have been lucky for the past several weeks -- after a two month drought we are now rewriting 3 or 4 articles each day. the extra income is very helpful in paying down my credit card and buying organic food for amy.  i am craving fried or baked chicken all the time now, and there is a mexican market down the street that sells chicken quarters for 69 cents a pound, so i want to stop there on monday when we get paid and buy about ten pounds of cheap chicken to roast up each day, a little at a time.  with a bag of yellow yukon potatoes, which i like to roast by the dozen in the oven and then eat them cold or diced and reheated all week long.  we still get lunches at the senior center, or rather we will be doing so in November.  i stopped getting the free lunches this month because they just tasted lousy, being mass produced cafeteria food. but november's menu looks pretty toothsome, with lots of swedish meatballs and meatloaf.

my health remains about the same.  i had a flare up of ankle trouble a few weeks back, and had to just sit around the house doing nothing, waiting for the swelling to subside.  i got new eyeglasses a while back, and went cheap so they're not bifocals -- i have to take them off when i read or even sing the hymns in church.

getting back to my poetry.  i've stopped emailing it to anyone and instead tweet it out to about 25 journalists each day.  the ones that either like it or retweet it.  don't tell anyone, but i can usually knock out a set of rhymed verses or a haiku in about ten minutes -- but i'm afraid if my fans find out how quickly i can usually do it they'll think it is facile and of no depth (which it probably is) and will stop liking & retweeting my work.

i still daydream about getting an offer from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal to write a daily poem for their newspaper. i like to imagine my byline in such an important newspaper and how good that would make me feel -- a circus tramp without a college degree who winds up a world-famous writer for a big newspaper.  ah well, what's wrong with dreaming?  without it, where would santa claus be or the easter bunny?

i'm beginning to plan what i'll eat for breakfast in a few hours. if there's time for it.  my stomach is always finicky in the afternoon and evening, so breakfast is the only meal i can really enjoy. we've got lots of buttermilk pancake mix, but i never seem to find the time to make 'em.  amy will make them anytime i ask her to, but she is so busy right now i feel shy about asking her to do it for me.

maybe i'll put on a pot of rice . . . no, no, i think instead i'll just have scrambled eggs with buttered toast. we've got some nice liver sausage from the farm up in Idaho, which i can put into the scrambled eggs.  but i'm going to take some aspirin right now and that will probably mean i'll be too groggy to cook anything before church.

the old clock on the wall tells me it's ten to five, so i'll turn off the oven and let the casserole cool off until noon. and try to close my eyes and close down my mind for some more rest.  amy always sleeps soundly right through the night. how i envy her!

take care, my little chaffinches, and be good -- and if you can't be good at least be Republican!   love, dad.