George Washington's
Rules of Civility
and Decent Behaviour

2nd:   When in company, put not your hands to any part of the body, not usually discovered.

Yesterday's Entries

2000: Life in the Fast Lane
2001:  Dumbfounded
2002:  Dark Victory
2003:  The Man Who Would Be King

CURRENTLY READING

Afterlife
by Paul Monnette

Sheila Video 1 ("See Sheila Run")
Sheila Video 2 ("Meet Barkley")
Sheila Video 3 ("Play time")

THE RAVELED SLEEVE OF CARE

25 August 2004

Sleep is a wonderful thing.

It was nearly 3 a.m. when I got to bed last night. That’s a late night period, but when you consider that my day had started 24 hours before, at 6 a.m. in New Jersey, 3 a.m. California time, it was even later. I slept 2 hours on the plane from Dallas to San Francisco, but even with that, I was really dragging when I got into bed.

Sheila was thrilled. She had faced closed doors at night while I was gone--Walt and Jeri, who was here over the weekened, weren’t as anxious to have her in bed with them as I am. She didn’t even follow me upstairs when I went to bed, but pretty soon I heard the toenails clicking cautiously on the linoleum outside the bedroom door and then there was the familiar leap as she landed on the bed. She wiggled her way up to my shoulder and sighed as if she was finally at home. She stayed there a lot longer than usual, but then curled up at the foot of the bed again and we both went to sleep.

I woke up at the usual 6 a.m. I’m the kind of person who likes to get up as soon as I wake up. I never have understood those people who can lounge around in bed for hours, or who can sleep late into the morning. Once my eyes open, I’m ready to get up.

But when my eyes opened this morning, my brain wasn’t quite as ready to get up. Sheila came up for her snuggle session and the more I cuddled with her, the more I realized that I wasn’t quite as ready to pop out of bed as usual. I gradually let myself fall back to sleep.

That was repeated a couple more times until I finally decided it was time to get up, sometime before 7:30, an unheard of wake-up time for me.

I spent the morning getting unpacked, looking at all the photos I took in New Jersey, putting away the great goodies I’d been given over the weekend and then near noon, realized that tonight I’m supposed to review Jesus Christ Superstar, which I have to admit is not one of my favorite shows. I decided I had to make sure I was well rested so I won’t nod off during the show--and ended up sleeping 3 hours.

I obviously had a lot of sleep to catch up on. I’m still feeling a bit "logy" but I think I may have finally gotten enough sleep for the day and can stay awake during the show.

From my journal in 2001...it bears repeating today:

The contractions started early in the morning--about 4:30 a.m. They weren't bad. They were spaced far apart, but it was obvious that the baby would be coming today. I called my parents to alert them, so they could come to take care of Jeri. "Don't rush," I said, but they did.

They arrived within an hour and we sat around all day waiting until the time was right to go to the hospital. Things had been slow up to that point, but once it was time, it was time. Ned was born mid-afternoon. The most amazing thing about him was the head full of black hair that he had.

From conception he'd been different from Jeri. I've always said that from the moment he had arm buds, he was waving them around. So terribly active, and the activity level did not stop once he was born.

As soon as he could walk, he wanted to climb. And when he climbed, he wanted to jump. I learned early on that he had an innate sense about what he could and couldn't do. If he jumped, it was something he knew he could jump. But it didn't make me any less nervous to watch him do it (it was just easier than fighting with him not to do it).

As he got older, his hero was Superman, who could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Ned didn't just admire Superman, he wanted to be Superman and so I bought him leotards and tights, found an "S" to sew onto the leotard, and made him a cape. He wore it constantly. When he went to school, for a period of time, he wore a suit over the costume. When his teacher commented on how well he was dressed, I shared with her the secret that he was really Clark Kent and that underneath the suit was his Superman costume.

Soon, it wasn't enough to dress like Superman. Ned saw that Superman was muscular, and he was only 6 years old and didn't look nearly as muscular. So he started taking newspapers and wadding them up, sticking them inside his costume to make him look like he had muscles.

I found myself saying ridiculous things like, "Can you please pick your muscles up and put them away," and "If you don't stop flying around the house, I'm going to take your cape away." (Did Mrs. Kent have these problems?)

When the Superman craze was waning, Charles Atlas came on the scene. Ned found a comic book with an ad promising to build muscles just like Charles Atlas (who surely must have been 80 by then--that ad had been printed ever since I was a kid, I think!). Ned saved his money and sent away for Atlas' book, convinced that within a week he'd be bulging with muscles. But of course he was not, and he was disappointed.

But eventually he moved on to other things. First there was the diving team. He was a pretty good diver, in his age group and generally ranked among the top 3 in the state at meets, but after a few years, the coach stopped teaching and Ned never pursued it.

It took him awhile to catch up with the others in school as far as height was concerned and there were a couple of rough years for him. So rough, in fact, that when he was offered the opportunity to spend a year in Brasil, we allowed him to go. He was 13 at the time and returned on his 14th birthday, taller, with a deeper voice, and a slight Brasilian accent.

He got into theatre. He had been part of a children's theatre group before he left for Brasil, but now he got into the technical part of it. He enjoyed hanging and focusing lights and running the light board. He and his friend Greg also started making movies. Always with chase scenes and fight scenes, some pretty good, some pretty stupid.

He took up drumming and was the drummer for Lawsuit, the band that consisted of exactly 12 musicians, including Paul, Jeri, and most of his best friends.

He married his high school sweetheart and they began a life together.

He began to get passionate about current events and became such a regular poster of letters to the editor, that people who met me in the supermarket would ask when Ned was going to write his next letter, because they wanted to hear what he had to say.

Ned has always lived life to the fullest. He burst forth into this world with a zest for life that was incredible. He demanded the best of life and he worked to get all he could out of that life. Life doesn't always live up to his expectations, but he keeps plugging away.

Being Ned's mother has never been dull. He's an incredible human being and I'm so proud of him. Today is his 37th birthday. Happy birthday, Honey!  

PHOTO OF THE DAY

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