eleven

I tried to stay up late last night and I got through Stephen Colbert’s monologue and his interview with Julie Andrews, then I was done. Managed to stay up past eleven, didn’t make it to eleven-thirty. Just didn’t have the juice. Of course, the big fat cheeseburger tranquilizing me from the inside out probably didn’t help nor, I think, did the beer I was drinking. If I want to stay up late tonight, I’ll have to be a bit more sensible about it, eat a salad for dinner and follow up with a cuppa decaf, then maybe get a nap. This is what you have to look forward to in your middle age, kids, if you want to stay up late enough to watch Colbert or Saturday Night Live.

I’m not sure I’m still in middle age, now that I think about it. The last half of middle age, maybe. When does middle age end and old age begin? I’m just going to pick and number and say 70. I like the sound of that. That’s still a few years away.

You’d think that after staying up past eleven and this being a Saturday, I’d get to sleep in late BUT NO, I DID NOT. Like clockwork, all three cats came to the bedroom door to whine for food. They’re good about leaving us alone all night long, but when the clock strikes five they’re right there. Almost as if they can count. Before we brought the kitten home, I’d just shuffle into the kitchen, dump an indeterminate amount of kibble in two dishes, leave it out for them to fight over, and shuffle back to bed, but the kitten is a crazy-ass force to be reckoned with. If I were to leave three bowls out, he would find a way to eat all of them, leaving none for the other two, or so little as to make no difference. He still eats his din-dins in a separate room. Even if I elect to leave him locked up in there and go back to bed, as I did this morning, there’s pretty much zero chance I’m going to fall asleep again after doing all that running around.

But I did try. Laid there for about a half-hour. The bed was super cozy-warm and the house was quiet as a tomb, but even so, I gave up at five-thirty, rolled out of bed and made myself a hot cuppa before firing up the laptop to see how much longer we’ve got before the first shots of the revolution are fired. I figure it’ll be six months, maybe a year. Not more than a year. I don’t see how this craziness can go on more than a year. Or maybe it can. The Great Depression dragged on for years while Roosevelt’s government kept a sharp lookout for warning signs of the next revolt. That was a pretty bad time, but circumstances were markedly different than we find ourselves in now. Just for a start, Roosevelt generally tried to appeal to the better natures of the public instead of kissing up to nationalists and raging against the press. So there’s that.