No more flipping of the finger

It's happened. I can't flip anyone off anymore. At least not first thing in the morning. Not that there's anyone I really need to flip off first thing in the morning, save for the poolman peering in the window before I've put on my 'face' or the trash guys who clatter down the street before god-fearin' folks are even awake. But it's nice to know you can give someone the bird on command.

Problem is my hands don't want to work in the mornings. Not sure if it's arthritis or too much salt or not enough salt or a hormonal imbalance or some rare Nubian disease I picked up telepathically while watching the National Geographic channel, but my fingers don't want to do what I want them to do. They just don't.

The other morning my right hand was completely numb, kind of like when your foot falls asleep, but this time it took about half an hour to come back to life. No joke. And after it did, I couldn't make a fist or even pick up a cup of coffee for another half. I ask you, WTF? I'm waaaay too young for these shenanigans. I'm also too young to be using the word 'shenanigans.'

The point is I'm barely pushing 50. My doctor father will tell you it's because I do too much with my hands between typing all day,knitting at night, playing tennis in the mornings, and the bare knuckle cage fighting on weekends.

I've decided he might be on to something, so I'm giving up the knitting.

The Musty Mother of Invention

Once again, my sleep, which is restless anyway since beginning perimenopause, was interrupted by a dream. In my dream, I was running a marathon and I was just about to cross the finish line--alone, because I had left everyone else stumbling in my wake--I slipped in a pool of my own perspiration. Humiliated, I writhed on the dirty asphalt of some random city street where they have such silly things as marathons, the sweat pouring off me in rivulets, which became streams, which became a river that swept up all the other marathon participants sending them crashing into buildings and traffic lights. I could see their heads and numbered bibs bobbing as they briskly flowed into a dirty ocean created by the fervent pumping of my sweat glands.

I screamed out, "Please forgive me, for I know not what I've done!" for ruining the race and quite possibly drowning a few of the runners, but my apologies were lost in a gust of rancid wind. I awoke in a panic, my sheets soaked from what are becoming regular bouts of night sweats, and my skin prickling from the soft whir of the air purifier.

I whispered to my partner, "Are you sleeping?" She obviously didn't hear me so I added a gentle nudge and asked a little louder.

"Hey, are you asleep?" "Wha?" she responded.

"Oh good, I was afraid maybe I woke you up with my sweating. I had this really weird dream..." I proceeded to tell her all about it, and even made her touch the damp sheets on my side of the bed.

"Sorry 'bout that," she said with a yawn. "Too bad they can't make sheets like diapers."

"Go back to sleep, you're not making any sense," I said, and got up to get a towel to place over the wettest part of the sheet so I could try to finish out the night without catching pneumonia. As I laid in bed, I started to think about what she said about sheets as diapers, and suddenly the proverbial light bulb went off in my dusty brain, singing away the cobwebs and other assorted debris that had gathered there since my hormones made concentration a periodic and very tedious activity.

Moisture-wicking linen! They make athletic clothing out of moisture-wicking material, why not sheets? What a great idea! I shook LB. "You're a genius!"

"Wha?" she groaned. "That thing about diapers; It's brilliant!"

"S'good. Night now."

I decided to let her sleep while I lay awake preparing a marketing plan for our new invention that was sure to make us millionaires, nay, trillionaires! With the female portion of the boomer generation securely anchored in menopause and the Gen Xers not far behind, the timing was perfect. I got as far as the first line of the jingle, "Keeping Dry is No Sweat"... when I realized we were out of toothpaste and this took me right into a shopping list, which then led me to having to drive to Costco and the fact that my car needed an alignment, which made me look at the fact that Costco gas is cheaper than Shell, which got me thinking about the economy, which made me so depressed I thought what's the point of inventing moisture-wicking sheets since no one can afford to buy anything, which made me anxious so I started sweating all over again.

Such is the circle of insanity at three o'clock in the morning.