Random Things–The Sleeping Like Shit Edition

–I am sleeping like shit.  I’m tired in the day and wake up repeatedly through the night.  Last night was the first night in ages I’ve had three hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Unfortunately for the dog, those three hours came between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m., so she did not get a walk.  This would not be so bad, except that I suspect my brain is so desperate to dream that I may be having waking dreams.  I’m giving it until after the holidays and if it doesn’t clear up, I’m going to the doctor.

–Lauren over at Faux Real is getting married.  I find weddings to be recklessly optimistic and utterly charming, no matter how terrible.  I know there are a lot of folks who think that no one should get married until everyone can, but I don’t think that’s effective hostage holding.  We should all follow our hearts and demand the right for others to follow theirs.

–When the Recovering Baptist cleaned my bathroom, we discovered that the only thing holding together the linoleum in my bathroom was the dirt.  Now it’s chipping away in places, showing the plywood underneath.  Will I forever only be able to afford to live in places with terrible bathrooms?

I had a dream that the Professor was helping me shop for houses and we looked at a place that had tile so beautiful throughout the house that the tile alone cost more than what I could get a mortgage for.

–I keep hearing these rumors about an economist at Vanderbilt who is doing a study on how many poor people there are in America, except that he wants to figure out not how many people are objectively poor, but how many people are barely getting by, regardless of income.  There’s some thought that most of us, in most income ranges, are trying to scrape by on the $100-200 a month that’s not going to rent/housepayments, car payments, and bills. I’ll be curious to see if that’s true.

We Go Bowling; My Mom Goes Dancing

You must imagine my mom, standing in the glare of the bowling alley’s lights, her slight shoulders sagging under the weight of a ball she’s not quite happy with, her pants not quite reaching the top of her Christmas socks.  She shuffles to the dotted line, looks back, and grins like she’s about to do something entirely foolish.

And then she lifts the ball in front of her, takes three surprisingly graceful steps towards the line and then she brings her arm back, a pause, it comes forward and then the ball rolls off her fingers, down the lane, and right into the pins.  Over and over again.

What the fuck?

When did my mom learn to bowl?  How come she’s never come bowling with us before?  When, we ask her, was the last time she’s even been bowling?

"Oh, I went with my dad."

Her dad’s been dead decades.

My mom hits spare after spare after spare and, after each one, she bends her arms at the elbows, grins, and shakes her butt, much to my dad’s chagrin and the Butcher’s and my delight.