it ends as it began

I wake up abruptly having dreamt my hands are asleep and itchy with needles, but when I open my eyes into the darkness my hands are no more asleep than the rest of me, and we all get out of bed.

In the morning I make coffee out of habit and then decide to drink it when I feel like I really need, rather than want it, and by the afternoon there are three cups of cold coffee in a soldierly row on my desk. I want everything to be what I want and balk at need and there is no faster way to make me give something up than to tell me I can't walk away.

Lately I've been considering the degree to which my stubborn self has put its queer shoulder to the wheel in the interest of getting me somewhere I did not necessarily want to go. If someone had told me I couldn't be a scientist because I am a woman, I would be wearing a white coat right now and I would know a lot more than you do, but I'm glad nobody told me that because few things interest me less than test tubes. I did make a mess of choices because I was told I couldn't, one way or the other, and some of those choices I really, really regret now. Still, I guess I mostly did okay.

There is still a typo on the White House web site, and it's messing with my ability to be purely delighted with it. I WROTE TO THEM about it, says Crotchety McEditpants, but apparently they think they have other, more demanding things to do or something.

I can't go to sleep at night because I need to get to the end of the chapter and then I need just a little taste of the next chapter which I then need to get to the end of, and I am torn between being distressed at my lack of self-control, which feeds me more vinegar and keeps me awake until 2 a.m. and shouldn't have said that, and my spontaneous nature, which loves the quench of hunger and the next chapter and anything revealing.

Then I fall asleep with the book under my head and when I wake up the bookmark's shape is pressed into my cheek, and I make a pot of coffee.

Comments

[Ellen]

Damn, what are you reading? It sounds like a good airplane book!
I'm working on my Christmas gift from my fantastic sister. I skimmed a tennis story last night though.

[tuckova]

I was reading American Gods, and now Anansi Boys, both by Neil Gaiman, whose name I have now learned to pronounce correctly. I knew from his propaganda that he was entertaining, but I had no idea he could WRITE.

[Madeleine]

I somehow love that you found a typo on the white house site, even though it is making you crazy. Shows the site was created by humans, not robots, right? And also how awesome you are.

[Ellen]

anansi boys... kind of a downer after american gods. i've been calling him "gayman", i guess that's the not-correct pronounciation?

[tuckova]

I thought it was guyman, but he is in a promo video for Coraline calling himself gaym'n, and so I'm thinking I've been wrong, since I expect he knows his own name better than I do.

[tuckova]

JV: I think you would like it, too. Sort of in the school of Tom Robbins at his best, with a hint of William Goldman. You like those guys, right?

[pam]

I really really LOVE that you wrote to the White House about the typo n their website. Supposedly we're an America with new priorities now, shouldn't good grammar and spelling be one of them?

[tuckova]

Pam- I'm pretending it's a typo, but I think it's really a factual error. They say "43 men have served as President of the United States" but in fact 42 men have served, and one is serving. The thing is, most people think of Obama as the 44th president, but he's really the 43rd, because Cleveland was President twice.

There were some other typos when the site was launched that I should check back on and comment about if they're still there--though the instant WHOA of the site kind of awed me into silence, but the whole "Fourty-four Americans have now taken the Presidential oath" thing is of particular interest to me, because: no.