Insomnia
Can't sleep. Last Saturday I stayed up drinking Diet Coke until 3:00 AM, then remembered that I wanted to be up for the Saints game at noon. And you see where that got us. Maybe I just won't sleep. Maybe I'll read another dumb but entertaining "romantic suspense" novel by Beverly Barton, my latest improvement-free pleasure.
(I refuse to have guilty pleasures; I'm too old for them. But I do admit that some of my pleasures are unlikely to improve me.)
New Orleans has been almost autumn-like these past few days. Low humidity, a cool wind, a snap in the air, pumpkins in the stores. Fall might be a good time to regrow a few layers of skin I seem to have lost lately. That guilt I wish I could talk about but can't (nothing to do with Catholicism, by the way, in case anyone wondered). The way music fills and hurts me in a way it hasn't really done since I was about 25. The feeling that somehow I've lost the path of the Beam.
I don't mean to be all gloomy, though. I'm really not. You should have heard me telling Chris about my plans to do a karaoke performance of "Only the Good Die Young" at St. Louis Cathedral this morning. OK, I guess I can't let that go by without an explanation. It started with Chris saying something about our trip to Amsterdam last November being for our "twentieth wedding anniversary," and I reminded him that we never had a wedding.
PZB: Do you want to have a wedding? You have to wear the big white dress. Let's spend $20,000 on our wedding. Everybody does it!
CdB: Yeah, everybody does it!
PZB: We'll have it in St. Louis Cathedral, because the priest there likes me so much.* We'll get a pumpkin-shaped carriage like Harry Connick Jr., and after the ceremony, I'll do a couple of hours of karaoke for the guests. OH! I'll do "Only the Good Die Young"!
CdB: That'll go over well at St. Louis Cathedral.
PZB: I'm a bad Catholic, aren't I?
The karaoke plan occurred to me because I love to sing, but nobody loves to hear me, and I figure a captive audience of friends and family wouldn't dare hurt my feelings on what is supposed to be My Big Fucking Day.
*Monsignor Crosby Kern, who actually spat at Our Lady of Good Counsel/St. Henry parishioners protesting the closing of our churches in Jackson Square on Palm Sunday 2009.
(I refuse to have guilty pleasures; I'm too old for them. But I do admit that some of my pleasures are unlikely to improve me.)
New Orleans has been almost autumn-like these past few days. Low humidity, a cool wind, a snap in the air, pumpkins in the stores. Fall might be a good time to regrow a few layers of skin I seem to have lost lately. That guilt I wish I could talk about but can't (nothing to do with Catholicism, by the way, in case anyone wondered). The way music fills and hurts me in a way it hasn't really done since I was about 25. The feeling that somehow I've lost the path of the Beam.
I don't mean to be all gloomy, though. I'm really not. You should have heard me telling Chris about my plans to do a karaoke performance of "Only the Good Die Young" at St. Louis Cathedral this morning. OK, I guess I can't let that go by without an explanation. It started with Chris saying something about our trip to Amsterdam last November being for our "twentieth wedding anniversary," and I reminded him that we never had a wedding.
PZB: Do you want to have a wedding? You have to wear the big white dress. Let's spend $20,000 on our wedding. Everybody does it!
CdB: Yeah, everybody does it!
PZB: We'll have it in St. Louis Cathedral, because the priest there likes me so much.* We'll get a pumpkin-shaped carriage like Harry Connick Jr., and after the ceremony, I'll do a couple of hours of karaoke for the guests. OH! I'll do "Only the Good Die Young"!
CdB: That'll go over well at St. Louis Cathedral.
PZB: I'm a bad Catholic, aren't I?
The karaoke plan occurred to me because I love to sing, but nobody loves to hear me, and I figure a captive audience of friends and family wouldn't dare hurt my feelings on what is supposed to be My Big Fucking Day.
*Monsignor Crosby Kern, who actually spat at Our Lady of Good Counsel/St. Henry parishioners protesting the closing of our churches in Jackson Square on Palm Sunday 2009.