Can't sleep...

It's one-thirty in the morning and I've been tossing and turning since midnight. The Snoring Symphony is playing in the bedroom..... hubby-snores from one side of the room, doggie-snores from the other. I wish I had a tape recorder. Not so I can hear it all again in the light of day, but so I can let my husband listen to it. I've tried to describe this stereo-snoring to him on mornings when he wakes up from a good sleep and asks me how I slept. Those are the mornings when I look at him in disbelief...... with snoring so loud, why doesn't he wake up from the noise?

Oh well. By the time I finish typing, I'm hoping to be so exhausted that I will fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow when I get back in bed.

Young Miss C was here after school today..... waiting for our answer on our summer vacation plans. She and her parents are going on a cruise to Jamaica, Cozumel, and someplace else that I can't remember just now. The cruise ship leaves from Galveston, and will be gone for seven days. They've asked us to go along with them. C is thoroughly excited at the prospect of all of us going on a vacation together.

But.... on a ship? For seven days? In the middle of the ocean? When C first told us about these plans the other night, she was just about jumping out of her cute little shoes. My first reaction was to look at my husband-- we were both thinking the same thing... remembering my experience on the whale-watching boat in Maine last summer. (Not something either one of us would like to repeat.)

I reminded C and her parents about my fear of being on a boat in the middle of the water. They told me this was a ship, not a boat. I told them that most of the Titanic, a ship, is still sitting at the bottom of an ocean. C's dad told me that last he'd heard, there weren't any icebergs south of the Gulf of Mexico. (Everyone's a comedian.)

We told them that we'd think about it, which we did. We told them we'd discuss it, which we also did. Miss C said that I could come over to their house and sit on a raft in the middle of their pool, so I would get used to the idea of being in the middle of the water. Nice try, I told her, but that's not exactly the same thing. Then C said she heard that Barry Manilow would be on the same cruise ship. Had it not been for the twinkle in her eye, I would've had my suitcase packed already.

We will most likely tell C and her parents that we won't be joining them on the cruise. My husband isn't at all disappointed, since he's never wanted to go on a cruise anyway. Although, he did want to go to Alaska last year, with a cruise being an option, and I told him to ask one of the guys to go with him. (No one can tell me there aren't any icebergs on the way to Alaska.)


The front and back flowerbeds now look so much better than before, since the landscaper re-designed them on Tuesday. Our two older cats have walked around the backyard and seem to approve of the new arrangement. AngelBoy sniffed all over the yard, inspecting the new location of the garden decorations... this cat notices when anything is moved, and I do mean anything. When the workers were here all day on Tuesday, AngelBoy was watching their progress in the backyard from underneath the wicker coffee table on the screen-porch. He never came out from his hiding place till everyone left the yard at the end of the day.

ShadowBaby watched all the workers as they clipped and pruned and trimmed... he sat right by the screens and meowed at the guys as they walked around the yard. Mickey Kitty was highly insulted and frightened at all the commotion around the screen-porch, so I brought him inside and he hid under our bed for the entire day. These cats are all so very different.

I'm hoping that our neighbors' cats will stay out of our front flowerbeds. Our own cats never leave our backyard, but I can't say that for other cats on our street. Sometimes Mickey Kitty will sit on the windowsill in my husband's office here, and he'll wait for our next-door neighbor's cat to walk around in our flowerbeds by the front walkway. That cat isn't walking around just to smell the flowers, mind you, so I don't much appreciate him being in the flowerbeds. But cats are cats... and I can't chase away a neighbor's cat. But I have been known to knock on the window when I see him in our yard, and that noise prompts him to go back into his own yard.


I'm still waiting to hear from the local stores here.... I've sent eMails and made phone calls to their corporate offices, asking them for donations of children's pajamas. Jeez.... you would think I've asked them all for their first-borns. I've had no problem getting book donations, from Half Price Books, and now from SouthWest Books...... so wouldn't you think that the pajama-people would buckle down and let our Houston Chapter have some of their pajamas? I've even suggested that they give me their clearance items... the pajama sets that haven't sold... the ones they mark down. So far, all I've gotten are eMails telling me that they've taken my request "into consideration."

Into consideration. That means the matter is before a committee. Give me a blessed break.

I take that back. Give me some blessed pajamas!