Sleep! That “knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.” And old but concrete simile, as long as you know what ravelled means–shaggy, uneven, hanging threads.

Last Spring I saw a sleep doctor and we began solving my inability to get to sleep. He did solve it, but I haven’t yet.  This is January and I’m in Florida in the same cottage we’ve come to for twenty years, at least. So it’s familiar.

but my sleep is topsy-turvy. Tuesday morning I woke at 3:30….

Bah! I’m sick of sleep. Because I’ve discovered what the problem is: My sleep misses my noise machine.  I use it every night at home, set on White Noise or Falling Rain. I turn it low so it won’t be irritating. I didn’t know it actually helped me.

I decided not to pack it and so my sleep ends abruptly. What do I do? I found an electric clock radio beside my bed. Tonight I shall set it to static or a station turned down very low. I should sleep to 6 easily.

You see, I’ve fallen in love with early rising, say 6 or so. It’s very quiet and Bernie is asleep. I get my tea and sit and write in my journal. More tea and more writing. then some breakfast. Lovely.

When I left Brooklyn, CT, I was waking at 7. Will I awake at 6 now when I go home Sunday?

It’s the 19th and you are begging me for a new post. Not that I got any email but I can know.

I’ve started doing meditation, doing it rather than being in it. I ordered DVD’s from The Great Courses on Mindfulness. Meditation leads to it, or is the way you experience it. You get me. First I learned how to sit–no back touching the chair, if you are in a chair instead of on a cushion, etc., and pay attention to your breath. Only to the breath.

You know all this even if you don’t meditate. I’ve tried it before but always felt I’d flunked the quiz. Couldn’t do it.

Now I’m doing about twelve minutes every morning after my tea and journal writing. All that tea isn’t good for mindfulness, but I want to use the time early in the morning when everything is quiet and Bernie is still sleeping.

I was going to call this piece, My Belly, because I seemed to spend so much time on brooding on how it sticks out and how I must lose some pounds if my new pants are to fit me well. And so this piece is about my belly  because I focus on  my breath in my belly.

 I like it.

I pulled over into the left hand turn lane this morning, and someone pulled in shortly after me. We were in the left lane of two. I found myself looking in the mirror at the car. Who was it?

What a foolish question! I was in Fort Myers Beach where we go every January. The number of tourists in up this year. Yes, the recession is over. Why spend your January up north (Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, etc) when you can swim in the Gulf down here in Western Florida? We’re from Connecticut where very shortly we are going to have the Polar Express. And evidently here in Florida too.

I struggled with the feeling that had arisen when I asked that question: Who is it? Why didn’t I know him? Well, perhaps I would have known him if we were on a road in Georgetown, Connecticut where I grew up. Is this a small town question: Who is that? And does it cause a small squirt of anxiety?

I can’t believe I’s so provincial, still in the small town where my Dad’s family had lived for some generations and my mother’s for a generation or two. A place where everyone knew me and my family and asked embarrassing questions, like, “You gonna be a nurse like your sister?” for the fifth time. No, I wanted to snarl. Maybe I did snarl. The woman who asked that question was very stupid. But I belonged. If there was someone I didn’t recognize I just knew it was a New Yorker escaping from the city. No interest to me.

And now I’m living in another village, the cottages where Bernie and I are staying for a month. I started to tell one woman that my son and daughter-in-law were going to come visiting, and before I could end my sentence, she said, “I know.” Like Georgetown, CT and Creamery Brook the air carried the message.

I haven’t answered my question about the squirt of anxiety.