relentless heat

I don't understand why I've never dabbled in crossword puzzles.

For some reason, they were a part of the paper I just never really noticed-- I'm not used to interacting with my newspaper, I just read it. Part of me associates them with opening the on-flight magazine during a long trip and having someone else's asinine guesses written in pen, bleeding through the article I'm trying to read and crowding my mind with germaphobic, claustrophobic ick.

I've only even picked up a crossword puzzle a couple of times, but overall I felt disconnected and a little confused at the whole thing, so I've never really committed. On Sunday, Tom met me at the coffee shop after I'd done 90 mins or so of freelance work, and he showed me how to do a puzzle. The NYT Sunday crossword puzzle, that is, in pen. My whole life, I've wanted to be with someone whose mind works that logically and quickly-- who devours the challenge in a quiet and deliberate manner. But it illuminated one of my girlish insecurities-- why would someone who does the Sunday puzzle that well choose to be with someone who struggles with visual gaps? Who hasn't practiced puzzles EVER, even though word play and trivia and clever games are among her favorite things? Should I be worried that he's with someone who takes twice as long to process some clues, and takes twice as long cheering when she gets a correct answer as he does?

Sundays have become crossword puzzles deep down in my bones... even sitting in the coffee shop and letting the Chai buzz fill my brain, there was an odd fidgety nervousness that likes to arrive around 3pm on Sundays. It manifested into a very strange and over-thinking night's sleep... I went to bed around 11:30, slept hard and overheated, and awoke ready to fiercely beat my recent arrival of Monday-anxious dips... I went to the bathroom to wash my face, pull my hair into a bun, and do an Annette Benning pep-talk, real estate agent style. I will sell this house today! Something was off. I went to the living room to turn the heat off, even though it will continue to pour heat directly into my bed all night if it's set to "OFF, DAMNIT" on the thermostat. The living room was blacker than a black steer's tuckus on a moonless prairie night.

I opened the door to my room, bobby pin between my teeth, left hand clutching a mound of twisted hair on top of my head.
3:00. AM. I'd had a whole night's sleep and peptalk in 4 hours and my body just wasn't in the mood to deal with my brain any more.

It was one of those days... I plowed through a morning's worth of work, sent a concerned email, mentally tried to remove the pestering pop-up voices of things that are too much for me to handle right now, and got up to put toast in the toaster for a small hummus & turkey sandwich. 20 minutes later, I returned to my desk while regretting the decision to eat an apple on an anxious stomach, and discovered that a leak had sprung in the ceiling. Right. Above. My. Head.

Papers splattered, computer splattered, coaster that Vicki made for me out of my first award-winning video splattered, speakers, purse, cell phone, lamp, desk phone, markers-- all splattered in ice that was melting through the insulation and tiles above my brand new desk.
Apparently it leaks so much that the fix-it guy in our department hadn't even replaced the rotted tiles above my desk. "What's the point? They're just going to get soaked again. You'd think I would've mentioned it to you, huh?" He laughed.

I leaned against the wall, finishing off the rest of my honeycrisp apple, watching the people in the office next to mine as they leaned against the wall and gawked at me, apple in hand, standing behind a mountain of plastic that I'd swaddled my electronics in.
I was ready for the day-- it was just 3am. And flooded.

I'm so glad that Tom showed me the art of puzzling. It was just what I needed last night when I got home, and tonight when I came home from work and destroyed what should've been a really nice dinner. I was so tired that I imagined cutting the chicken. I actually imagined it. In reality, I dumped the entire thawed breast in the pan and didn't realize my blunder until halfway through cooking it.

If I'm tired and flustered enough that a chicken breast looks like diced chicken, I need ... a padded room? A deep breath. A little more sunlight, a little less office lighting.

Something I'm prone to (not proud of, but prone to) is worrying when a moment, a day, a weekend-- anything relevant-- feels too special. I worry that if I let my guard down and get drunk on the delirious wonderfulness of whatever's happening, that I will somehow cast a curse and elsewhere, disaster will strike.
I'd be less prone to this if it was less persistent.
But that romantic and schedule-free bliss of a weekend with someone you love can so suddenly transform into a serious and sobering distance when something significant goes wrong. The care-free Friday night eating sweet potato french fries can somehow add even more snow to the deck above your office, resulting in a cascade of freezing water onto your head and belongings come Monday morning.

Untrue. Unfair. Glass-half-empty, and I know it.
I'm utterly out of juice, and it makes the highs feel even more intoxicating and the lows feel even more emotionally draining. There are rare times when I call my mom for help, when I've run so low on reserve battery power that I need someone to go to, and for some odd and endearing reason-- those SOS phone calls are just never really registered. She'll be cooking or looking out the window at a bird or watching baseball or thinking about something else, and I'll get some distracted "mm-hmms" and "oh! well that's too bad," in the most chipper register imaginable.

It's frustrating because sometimes I actually really want help-- I want to arrive at her door 30 minutes later looking bedraggled and lost, and have her help me unpack the bags under my eyes. But in some ways, it's sweet... it's sweet because it almost seems like she's so entrenched in her Mom world that she just doesn't have much to say when I confess being overwhelmed, and it's sweet because it reminds me of the many times that we've had the same exchange... I say I'm in over my head; she nods and stirs the chili she's making and says "well anyway... you should sleep and tomorrow I'm going to the bank, and then the..." and melts into mom chatter.

Her advice to me is always this: "get some sleep." That's about it.
I found myself saying the same to the one I love tonight. I was at a loss for words and the cotton between my ears is making every single thought not only obscured, but also delayed. I wanted to say so many things, but they all sounded like Latin (16 across and 10 down) ... and sleep was the only thing I could pinpoint as a viable helpful suggestion.

In some ways, it's such a pathetically unimportant thing to think or do.
But in others, I'm finding, it means so, so much to sleep.

I learned today that it's likely that the fetus has REM sleep in the womb... dreaming, presumably, of simply the muted sounds, lights and physical touch they're experiencing at that stage of development. If we dream before we learn to eat, breathe or cry, that seems like a pretty profound part of our lives. And if we can surrender the anxiety or joy or chaos enough to really sleep, to wrap ourselves in quilts and darkness and-- if we're lucky-- the arms of someone we love, and really let go, I think there's something profound in that kind of healing sleep. Whether we're exhausted or exhilarated, we catch up and find balance during the night. We wear ourselves out by getting up at 3, or indulge ourselves by getting up at 10. We ride the crest of waves that sweep us into the Proustian tide of sleep, and self, and whatever happens in our brains that makes sleep and imagination an essential part of living...

I can tell without even having read my last entry that this is probably exactly what I was babbling about in the last post. A forlorn, scattered, overly-anxious, sleep and dream-obsessed stream of words that leads to nowhere but the ocean.

Oh well. SOMEDAY, I will know which words to say, and I will say them at the appropriate time in the best way possible to the person who needs to hear them.
When that day comes, there will be champagne and joy and many, many lists that I will get to write out of giddy delirium.