Sleepless in Murfreesboro

I tried to be a good girl.  Really I did.  I was all the way under my sheet and light blanket, extra down pillow lodged beneath my aching right hip, halfway mesmerized by the steady even breathing of my husband beside me. 

And fully awake.  The circling birds of my mind, those perpetual thoughts which have plagued me since my childhood, worried over the remains of the day, still searching for scraps to pick bare long past the point when pickin's were good.  So, up I rose to pace back and forth on the Internet, in my journal, and on the sidewalk in front of our suburban home.

Scribbling a few pages in my personal notebook was refreshing.  Between maintaining a regular schedule with the blog, contemplating the next steps in my book process, and just living life on all its myriad planes, I find keeping track of my private thoughts, chronicling both the mundane and the momentous, and doing a bit of writing strictly for me, tends to get swallowed up in the busy whirlwind.

But journaling is a surefire way to slow things down.  Even momentarily.  This gal is terrible at slowing down.  I'm desperate to figure out how.  But until then, I'll value any small stopping point along the hectic way.  We'd all do well to go a round or two with a journal.  Burn it later if you must, but the cathartic and therapeutic benefits which stem from penning one's issues and the like on paper, and reading it, expunging it from the surface of the soul, is worth the time.

While I'm in the business of recommending leisurely but introspective activities (it was brought to my attention that I tend to be very introspective in my writing, even with this -- my 'lighter' blog; I realize I'm incapable of being anything else but . . . so if that's not your style . . . leave, run, take to the hills, never to return to this blog site), perhaps you'd care to try the night sky.  It is particularly peaceful and lovely by the light of an almost full moon.  Even with the lights of the city softly glowing along the perimeter, the light of a thousand stars is still visible.  I imagine I can hear them twinkle.  Then, I realize it is the low hum of dozens of air conditioning units working in the wee hours of morning here in our development.  It's almost comforting.  There may even be an impromptu concert awaiting you.  Maybe a night-day memory challenged mockingbird belting out its song just down the block, oblivious to human sleepers, and fully engaged with the waxing orb tracking across the heavens.

Admire the trees you planted five years ago.  Marvel at the trailing tendrils of weeping willow which kiss the earth though your spouse, son, and sister-in-law find it sloppy and firmly 'suggest' you trim it to hover a full foot or two above your mixed-greens front lawn.  Find pleasure in the arching habit of the Eastern redbud which is beginning to extend over the curve in the walk leading to the front door.  Check the crape myrtle for opening buds as most around town are dressed in full regalia.  Note with an almost parental pride that the bookend river birches are handsome in their textured suits of brown, tan, and orange.  As you return to the front door, take in the new bloom on the magenta chrysanthemum.  Brush the emerging tips of the two Boston ferns before turning the deadbolt into its locked position.

And then, when all of that is accomplished, done, finished . . .

. . . GET . . . TO . . . BED!!!