Excuses excuses
Well. I was trying to post an entry every day, but if "every day" means "every night around 11:30 PM" to you, as it does to me, sometimes things happen that find you in places other than in front of your computer at your entry-writing time. My latest excuses are:
Sunday night: I'd been writing for about an hour when I felt one of my one-level-below-a-killer-migraine headaches beginning just above my right eye. Figuring that online communication was not as important as my health, I took out my contacts and got into bed. Adam was already there; he works from 5 AM until 1 PM now, and he'd saved my spot in bed with a stuffed animal. I pressed the right side of my head against the pillow -- that's the main way I cure my headaches these days.
Somewhere in the darkness, a gravelly whirring began. It had the right volume to be an airplane circling our apartment complex and the surrounding area (the surrounding area being a recycling center, a golf course built over a landfill, several more apartment complexes, and the gas station their tenants frequent), and so I decided that an airplane was exactly what it was... whirring out towards Roswell Road, then whirring back in above our building. I pressed the pillow harder against my head as my thoughts threatened to make my headache worse: this airplane has been circling for about fifteen minutes now... no, twenty. It can't circle forever. It'll eventually run out of fuel and crash. It could also be a hijacked jet, or a military plane trying to protect this area from something else that's happening! But what could that BE?! I sat up in bed, ignoring my headache. I peered between the slits in the blinds and saw that no lights were on in the building across the way. Was I the only one hearing this? I looked over at Adam and figured I'd need to wake him up. We were going to have to get out of here before the plane crashed. I envisioned myself having to go door to door in our building, waking up the neighbors and letting them know that perhaps they, too, might want to drive far away before the plane crashed on our building.
I got up, put on my glasses, went into the spare bedroom, and opened my laptop again. Neither CNN.com nor AJC.com had any news alerts about strange airplane activity. I grabbed the phone and was ready to dial 911, but what was I going to say? I can't sleep... there's a damn airplane circling above my apartment complex, and is it possible for you to confirm that this plane is going to crash and I'm going to die unless I get out of here? At one point I had a plan of what I was going to grab on my way out of the apartment: Adam, Gus, computer, cash, sturdy pair of shoes, comfy jacket, change of underwear, car keys. But, later, the whirring dulled my panic into submission, and I put the phone down, took off my glasses, and just... went back to bed.
I woke up a few hours later, with two-tone hair hanging in messy layers across my face, and a dull scar of pain above my right eye letting me know that I was most definitely alive (because if there is indeed an afterlife, surely it will correct for things like late-night headaches and disagreeable hair). When Adam called me at work in the afternoon, I told him about the mysterious plane.
"Are you sure it wasn't somebody's air conditioner unit?" he said.
Eh?
"Well...," I said.
"Because your headaches never make you sensitive to light and sound, and they never make you all disoriented..."
Well. Foiled by cooling appliances. Maybe it's time to find a headache cure that goes beyond the art of pillow-pressing.
Monday night: Was recovering from the three hours of sleep I got on Sunday night. I fell asleep while watching The Godfather, Part II on AMC. Fredo didn't know how to order a banana daiquiri at a Cuban cafe. Michael told him, "Banana daiquiri!"
Tuesday night: Sat in the traffic of a lingering rush hour to meet crazy friend for coffee across town. We spent some time editing her match.com profile. Back at home, AMC was still having its Godfather marathon, but since I didn't want to subject myself to the stupid ending of Part Three, I escaped to the bedroom with some writing evaluations I was supposed to score for work. After seeing the words "safety" and "important" misspelled in many strange and creative ways, I gave up on writing for another night.
Sunday night: I'd been writing for about an hour when I felt one of my one-level-below-a-killer-migraine headaches beginning just above my right eye. Figuring that online communication was not as important as my health, I took out my contacts and got into bed. Adam was already there; he works from 5 AM until 1 PM now, and he'd saved my spot in bed with a stuffed animal. I pressed the right side of my head against the pillow -- that's the main way I cure my headaches these days.
Somewhere in the darkness, a gravelly whirring began. It had the right volume to be an airplane circling our apartment complex and the surrounding area (the surrounding area being a recycling center, a golf course built over a landfill, several more apartment complexes, and the gas station their tenants frequent), and so I decided that an airplane was exactly what it was... whirring out towards Roswell Road, then whirring back in above our building. I pressed the pillow harder against my head as my thoughts threatened to make my headache worse: this airplane has been circling for about fifteen minutes now... no, twenty. It can't circle forever. It'll eventually run out of fuel and crash. It could also be a hijacked jet, or a military plane trying to protect this area from something else that's happening! But what could that BE?! I sat up in bed, ignoring my headache. I peered between the slits in the blinds and saw that no lights were on in the building across the way. Was I the only one hearing this? I looked over at Adam and figured I'd need to wake him up. We were going to have to get out of here before the plane crashed. I envisioned myself having to go door to door in our building, waking up the neighbors and letting them know that perhaps they, too, might want to drive far away before the plane crashed on our building.
I got up, put on my glasses, went into the spare bedroom, and opened my laptop again. Neither CNN.com nor AJC.com had any news alerts about strange airplane activity. I grabbed the phone and was ready to dial 911, but what was I going to say? I can't sleep... there's a damn airplane circling above my apartment complex, and is it possible for you to confirm that this plane is going to crash and I'm going to die unless I get out of here? At one point I had a plan of what I was going to grab on my way out of the apartment: Adam, Gus, computer, cash, sturdy pair of shoes, comfy jacket, change of underwear, car keys. But, later, the whirring dulled my panic into submission, and I put the phone down, took off my glasses, and just... went back to bed.
I woke up a few hours later, with two-tone hair hanging in messy layers across my face, and a dull scar of pain above my right eye letting me know that I was most definitely alive (because if there is indeed an afterlife, surely it will correct for things like late-night headaches and disagreeable hair). When Adam called me at work in the afternoon, I told him about the mysterious plane.
"Are you sure it wasn't somebody's air conditioner unit?" he said.
Eh?
"Well...," I said.
"Because your headaches never make you sensitive to light and sound, and they never make you all disoriented..."
Well. Foiled by cooling appliances. Maybe it's time to find a headache cure that goes beyond the art of pillow-pressing.
Monday night: Was recovering from the three hours of sleep I got on Sunday night. I fell asleep while watching The Godfather, Part II on AMC. Fredo didn't know how to order a banana daiquiri at a Cuban cafe. Michael told him, "Banana daiquiri!"
Tuesday night: Sat in the traffic of a lingering rush hour to meet crazy friend for coffee across town. We spent some time editing her match.com profile. Back at home, AMC was still having its Godfather marathon, but since I didn't want to subject myself to the stupid ending of Part Three, I escaped to the bedroom with some writing evaluations I was supposed to score for work. After seeing the words "safety" and "important" misspelled in many strange and creative ways, I gave up on writing for another night.