3 a.m.

My mosquito bites are itching - my right arm, left wrist, the back of my right thigh, my left calf and both ankles...the sole of my foot?

I am trying not to move.

The fan is blowing gentle air over the double bed where Eli is snugly against my back and Chinny at my feet. They are both peacefully unaware that it is 3 a.m. and I am wide awake.
I might be sleeping, too, had I not slumbered away half of the muggy afternoon on this bed with them. They don't seem to have any problem sleeping and I am too polite to disturb them.

In a fit of frenzied ambition, I spent the evening performing such trivial tasks as cleaning the mess off the coffee table, sorting the library books, hanging up clothes and watching Notes on a Scandal (which was quite good, but overdue at VPL). At midnight I was eating spinach and playing a video game. At 1 a.m. I started a book, thinking I would perform my obligatory nightly read-to-relax maneuver for a few minutes, and got enthralled in the memoir of a woman whose husband was hit by a car(while walking their dog) and received a traumatic brain injury.

Lauren has not been home since Friday. In fact, the only human I viewed all day yesterday was Zachary my darling for a short exposure. I worked a long time on this blog which is assuming a life of it's own.

My afternoon nap had been one of those awful rubber-cemented-to-the-bed experiences where I thought someone was calling me and I just couldn't get up. Not expoxied-to-the-bed, because I seemed to move my limbs, struggling like a swamp creature in a morass of clinging goo.

I can't tell if I am awake or asleep when that happens.
It scares me.


Bill Bixby