Once we were eating at Jalapeno Tree and he asked me for some quarters. He went over to the machine and plucked up a bear and took it to a little girl who was crying at the table beside us. Never said a word. Just went back to his meal.
He is also incredibly sweet.
1) I am not good at operating the claw machine.
2) I still have one of the animals my grandson gave me. A pink and white striped giraffe. It keeps my place in my bed each day as I go about my daytime stuff.
3) I have been reading a book titled Living, Thinking, Looking by Siri Hustvedt in which she discusses, among many other things, sleeping and not sleeping. She mentions that children often rely on a familiar object, such as a blanket or a stuffed animal, to help them transition into sleep.
I just have a hard time letting go of my conscious thoughts and slipping into sleep. Sometimes I actually resent the whole idea of sleep. I have so many things I want to think about that I don't really value sleep.
I worry about it (which makes sleep even more elusive) sometimes because I have read countless articles about the dangers to mind and body that sleep deprivation does over time.
Bram Stoker writes, "How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams." I'm not saying that my life is filled with fear and dread--I just seem to have a perverse relationship with sleep.
I have written about it a lot. Here is one of my sleep poems:
I like to be the first one asleep
and the second one awake;
I like knowing someone else is in charge
of keeping the clocks ticking.
And I like to prop my door just so,
not quite open,
not quite closed,
as though I will be more likely to know
when the future scurries past
like a rat in search of yesterday’s cheese.
I don’t remember a day when I wasn’t afraid,
when I didn’t wake with a start,
shocked to find myself
still part of this planet,
still breathing yet still,
and I always have to stop myself
from imagining the worst.
If I were a flower, I would be a thorn.
If I were a coin, I would land on my face.
If I were a mirror, I would reflect beauty,
unable to capture it for myself.
If I were a chorus, much loved and often sung,
I would long to be a forgotten verse.
I am not good at time management.