driving at night

it's not really night. by the time our lawn is dark, i have a tired bod and every part of me, from the brain down, reclines toward sleep. i'm not much use to anyone then, and i would probably be a menace on the road. but in the early evening, if bim gets home in time and Little submits to her bed, i sometimes go driving.

tonight i went to our little local library and wandered for as long as i could, needing to use the little girls' room but wanting to find the right book before giving in. on the drive home i was rewarded by those killer san gabriel mountains.

mmm, boy. it's that time of evening when the mountains turn in profile, pull on their night wraps--the most delicate purple layers--and smoke quietly against the auburn sky of the city's outer urbs. can mountains be delicate? yeah, they can. add that to the list of things-i-didn't-know-i-needed-till-i-saw-em.

i'm not sleeping too well. already i'm getting uncomfortable in my skin, to the point that exhaustion isn't enough to throw me over the wall. in that sleepy-but-not-sleeping stage of the evening, when i'm too far gone to read or talk, i turn on the telebee. last night i think i watched 3 straight hours. i guess i sort of look to the tv as that boat (you know the one, from mythology and yore) that carries me across the river styx to the underworld or, in this less morbid case, to sleep. once you've boarded that boat, you're not so interested in the journey as you are in the destination, not knowing what the he** to expect, but not in the least motivated to avoid it. and so you end up watching farmer wants a wife.

come to think of it, pregnancy is kind of that way for me--like the riverboat, i mean, not reality television (which i still think is stupid, stupid, stupid). at its best and worst, pregnancy and childbirth are a necessary journey for me to travel before i can receive my darling bundle of kicks and spit. does this mean i must confront death to approach birth? hm. either way, it's not a time when i am fully aware of what's going on around me except to notice that the boat won't stop rocking and i'm about to heave-ho.

this time around i am going to try to document the experience more carefully. i'm bound to say some stupid things (see above). but, i ask you, how can it be otherwise when i'm always half asleep?