This morning I woke up at 3:45am. For good.
The trip to Keystone Colorado was very adventuresome and fulfilling and I returned Sunday night around 11:45pm. Friday and Saturday we hiked in two completely different environments. One, an alpine hike at Loveland Gap (somewhere in the vicinity of 12,000ft above sea-level) made me realize how easy it would be for a person to die in the Rockies-—the second was a forest-bound trail to two ponds, "Big LIlly-Pad" and "Little Lilly-Pad"…the forest was beautiful and very symmetrical....made me realize how easy it would be for a person to find herself hopelessly lost in alpine forests and die. Morbid? Well, I suppose one could survive had she the right tools. After all, if Anthony Hopkins can do it in "Bear," so can I, right?
Both hikes were also quite breathtaking and awe-inspiring. By the time we were acclimated to the oxygen levels and the time change it was time to leave for home. I had my hair cut in downtown Denver to pass time before our flight. I think I’m still on western time…so I really only woke at 5:45, which would be okay if it were Eastern Time, so I’m not stressing it.
I just wrote “time” five “times” in one paragraph. That has to grammatically incorrect or redundant or something. Maybe just plain annoying.
So I woke up and played with my youngest child/cat, Curtis Johnson, who was snuggled up against my arm in a position I thought should have been rather uncomfortable but he seemed happy. Stella Luna lurks around by herself all night and most of the day and requires little attention. Curtis, on the other hand, is very lovable. They remind me of my brother and me when we were little. He’s drinking from a glass of water on my bedside table….Curtis, that is, not my brother.
Then I read some of Cats Cradle (vonnegut)…. a book I’ve had for years but never really read. Sometimes I collect good fiction so that one day when I wake up early in the morning and can’t go back to sleep, I have something to read. So finally it happened that I needed a good book. And it’s good. I’d read more but I was sidetracked by having to blow my nose and on the way back to bed I noticed my clothes needed to be unpacked. So I started doing that, then had to blow my nose again and while in the bathroom remembered I needed to get my shower curtain out of the dryer because I washed it yesterday. So I did that. Then I thought I’d write a blog, so here I am.
I figure I’ll get really sleepy around 7 when I usually officially wake up for the day and have to start getting ready for work. That’s what usually happens when I wake up in the middle of the morning and can’t go back to sleep.
At some point tomorrow my roommate and I will talk about how we slept and I’ll tell him this story, or maybe he’ll read it first, and he’ll say, “You were awake all that time? I didn’t even hear you” or something like that…even though he has a fan in his room that would drown out any noise going on outside his bedroom. Last night we went to Mellow Mushroom for pizza and PBR. A little “tradition” we have, you might say.
Now I’m debating whether I should finish unpacking or replant the poinsettias that are on our balcony suffering in their original potting mix. If I did that now I wouldn’t have to do it tomorrow when I got home from work, and it’s cool out, no mosquitoes yet, so maybe I will. I’m starting to feel like I’m having an “Ellen” moment.
you know what I mean
5:41am
