Nebulous Mooch

Some people like to get up early. They like to see the sunrise. It makes them feel like they’ve got more time in the day. I know some of these people, and I’m definitely not one of them. I don’t have much need to see the sunrise. I see it set everyday. I think that’s pretty much the same thing just in reverse. In my opinion only the clinically insane would want to wake up before the sun comes out. Nobody needs that much time in their day.

My mother has always gotten up very early. I’m not trying to imply that my mother is insane. I’m just saying that she likes to have a lot of time in her day. At 11:30 at night she’d say things like, “I have to get to bed soon. I have to be up by 4 in the morning after all.” She likes to brag about not needing much sleep. My mother’s minimal sleep requirements used to be what I aimed for. I thought this was a pretty good goal. I’d read websites about how to shorten my sleep requirements. Then I’d try these techniques out and always come to the same conclusion. Sleeping less definitely gives you more hours in the day–more hours to suffer for the splitting headache you have from not getting enough sleep.

I used to think it was because I needed 8 hours of sleep, but recently I discovered that isn’t exactly true. I’ve realized that as long as I don’t get up before 8 o’clock  I’m fine. I could go to bed at 7 in the morning and get up an hour later and be totally fine. I would never do that of course because I don’t need that many hours in my day. Ideally I’d like to sleep until 9 or 10 or maybe even 11:32, but life isn’t always ideal.

The saying goes, Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. I’d like change that saying to early to bed, early to rise makes a man unable to get to sleep at night, gives him a huge headache the next day and puts him in a  bad mood. That saying probably won’t catch on, but I think it’s more realistic.

The guys who came to replace our broke fridge with an “almost new” fridge where shady looking characters. They took the old fridge away and after they left my husband said in his best Watford accent, “Two dodgy blokes, two dodgy fridges. We’ll replace your old dodgy fridge with another dodgy fridge. We’ll take the old dodgy fridge  and sell it to someone else who doesn’t know they’re getting a dodgy fridge.”

Our refrigerator broke and my desire never to waste any food drove me to eating the strangest food combination. I snaked on Kalamata olives and put dabs of red curry paste in just about everything I cooked during the day. I said a little pray before heating up the leftover spaghetti that had already gone warm in the the fridge to feed my family for lunch. No one got food poisoning luckily. No one noticed that the sauce tasted just a bit like red curry either.

Isn’t it just our luck that the weather was so sunny and warm on the weekend we had not refrigerator.

The walls in our place are pretty thin. I can hear the conversation the upstairs neighbors are having right now. They’re quiet neighbors so I really don’t mind. I wonder what they think of us though.

We’re the noisy neighbors. I know that and feel a bit embarrassed. My husband is a professional musician and he has to practice. I play the saxophone and my stepson slams doors–he doesn’t do it as much these days. We probably drive them nuts.

My husband bought a set of congas today. As he unpacked them from their boxes, I wanted to run upstairs and apologizes to the neighbors right away. “I’ll play them quietly,” he said, but our house is already filled with the sound of drumming.