Just something to help me ease down into sleep

I am  antsy and agitated, bored and boring, crotchety and cranky.
I fall asleep over my book, turn out the light, turn over. And wake up.
I feel chilled, pull the covers over my shoulder. And begin to feel sticky.
This is why:  The moon is waxing, 95% of full.
What to do...?
If I were a cat I would be roaming the house and yowling.
I decide to give up on "bed" and write something.


If it were warm outdoors, a hot summer night, I would go outside and wander around barefoot, lie on the grass and stare at the lit-up landscape.  On a clear moonlit night, the trees look bigger, sounds carry farther. I would know what's afoot in the old orchard at the bottom of the field.


I have been ill. A virus that swelled in mere minutes into a full peony blossom of a cold and settled in my sinuses and in my bronchi.  I am mostly past the wheezy stage, thanks to an arsenal of medications. During the worst of it, I regressed emotionally to six years old.  I wanted my mother, sitting on the edge of the bed, running her fingers through my hair over and over again, speaking in soft tones about nothing.
I tried running my own fingers through my hair: it isn't the same.


I saw a coyote in the morning two days ago while I waited for the dogs to wend their way indoors from the front yard. It was strolling uphill in the field between the house and the road. I wanted Husband's gun, not to shoot it . . . I couldn't hit anything smaller than the house . . . but to make our environs noisily inhospitable.  Lacking anything more noisy than myself, I yelled unintelligible sounds, and clapped my hands to make as much of a rifle sound as hands can. I jumped up and down and waved my arms. The coyote heard, stopped, looked at me from the quarter-mile distance.
He looked for a little longer than I wished him to. But then he dropped his head and took up a slow lope toward the top of the field until he was out of sight.  I suspect he was put off more by the sight of a leaping, yelling crazy woman than by any fear of harm.
Pretty little thing, he was. But I want him no closer than he was to me and my dogs.

The robins, red chests all fat and round, have been scouring the yard for days, reminding me of The Gleaners.  

A few times a day during these days of Bad Breathing, I suit up and go outdoors to wander the perimeter of the yard with the dogs in the deceptive sun. It's colder than the golden light makes it appear, but just right for my out-of-order respiratory system.  There isn't mud smell yet; too early and too chilly. But neither is there the scent of snow in the air.  

I wander the way I did as a child: over there to see if the bluebird houses have tenants, a little farther to pick up branches fallen from the locust trees. There is a branch twisted loose enough to hang down, but not broken, partially blocking one of the bluebird houses.  I think the bluebirds won't like that, so I pull on the end that's near the ground.  But it needs a saw and it's too high to cut without a ladder. Ladder-carrying is beyond my interest and capabilities, so I leave it, and wander on. 

I watch the ground under my steps. Most of the yard has solidified, but in spots my feet make prints surrounded by pressed-out water. If I were six, I would imagine I were a giant stepping over the earth.

There's something greening up in the garden. I suspect it's a weed, but it's green.  I so long to see green that I leave it and make a note to trowel it out on a later trip.

A red-tailed hawk perches in a tree, waiting for some four-legged meal to appear. He allows me much closer  than I expect and I stare upward at him, all gathered into himself, part of the tree in which he waits motionless. Finally he spreads his wings and flaps twice, with the slightest of feather sounds, flies off.  I don't know if I've made him feel crowded or if he's simply off to check other hunting grounds.

Since I'm out and moving, I bring in some wood from the shed, justifying my continued existence: Two trips, seven pieces of wood. I let them fall, bumping and banging into the woodbox and take off my jacket, hang it by the door. 

I have three novels half-read. Begin one, take it upstairs for napping, forget to bring it downstairs, start another. That one takes more concentration than I can spare, so a third comes off the shelf. My mind weaves together plot and characters from all three so that it takes several pages of each to orient myself to whatever book is in hand.

All this desultory motion, and not much product to count up at the end of the day. 

Exactly like being six years old again.