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NocturneDecember 04, 2005 Woke up at 3:10 this morning and after about five minutes of trying to drop back to sleep, I got up, donned bathrobe, and padded into my office/kitchen to knock off a few more pages of The Huge Job (only 200 pages to go, folks). Most of my life I've been able to fall asleep in seconds (even after finishing off a stiff cappuccino within the previous hour) and sleep through the night -- several years ago I really did sleep through a fatal car crash just outside my front door. (On the other hand, when Rhodry was a puppy and wanted out in the middle of the night, the slightest yip was enough to wake me from a sound sleep.) Whether because of middle age or perimenopause or just a hyperactive subconscious, in recent years I've been occasionally waking in the middle of the night. It didn't take much of this to realize that "trying to fall asleep" is a miserable and generally futile experience; finally I understood the booming market in sleeping pills and decaf coffee. I avoid pills whenever possible, and caffeine doesn't seem to be at issue, so usually I either read for a while or get up and go to work. This time I made some herb tea and put in a solid hour's work. First sign of returning drowsiness was when I reached for the Deva catalogue (one of several distractions mixed in with the work-related debris on the floor to the left of my chair) and considered ordering a cozy flannel nightgown. I was nearly out of sharpened red pencils, and my downstairs neighbors -- whose bedroom is directly under my pencil sharpener -- can hear pretty much every noise I make, just as I was hearing the snores of one and the sneezes of the other. My wandering gaze settled on the stepladder propped up in the opposite corner, between the "pantry" and the multi-shelf thingie where I store paper, notecards, envelopes of various sizes, and other office supplies. I really should put the ladder back in the basement . . . The stepladder has been in semi-permanent residence since a year-long skirmish with a quirky overhead light fixture: nearly every time the light was turned off and then on, one of the two bulbs would go out, whereupon I would climb the ladder, remove the cover, and fiddle with the bulb till it came on again. Eventually that socket died completely and then the other one went wonky; at that point, late this past summer, I called the landlord, and he replaced the fixture. I haven't got around to taking the stepladder around to the basement -- sooner or later one bulb is going to burn out, right, and I'll need the ladder to replace it? Right. In the middle of the night, I discover, procrastination is sometimes revealed as an elevated, and entirely commendable, form of patience. See, I favor clotheslines over dryers, but in the months of short daylight the heavier stuff is still very damp at the end of the day (assuming, of course, that it hasn't frozen solid). In previous winters I've thrown the load into the dryer in the basement, which I share with my downstairs neighbors, but the dryer, after a long period of failing health, finally gave up the ghost and was carted away a couple of months ago. Rather than continue to hang stuff on the two towel racks and the shower rod, I've been contemplating buying a clothes-drying rack. At 4:30 this morning, my stepladder revealed that it is really a clothes-drying rack in disguise. I went back to bed and dropped easily off to sleep. (Note to self: Next time you get up in the middle of the night, ask Rhodry to keep the bed warm while you're out of it. And while we're at it, it's really time to get out the flannel sheets.) When I re-woke, a bit after 7, the branches outside my window were limned in snow. I wasn't the only one working in the middle of the night.
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