Thoughts from the Ass End of the Night, chapter 315, verse 6

Insomnia night.

I think my work schedule is contributing to this one.

I have to close a couple or three nights a week.  Store closes at 11.  I'm there until 11:15 or 11:30, usually, depending on how long the accounting close takes.  I'll get home around midnight.  If I'm lucky, I'll be in bed by 12:30 or 1, but sometimes it goes until 2 or 3 if I'm wired.

I also have to open a couple days a week.  On those opening days, I have to get up at 5:15 AM.

My boss used to have a penchant for the Turn & Burn shift.  I never understood it, but I had to ask him to stop a couple times, since a turn & burn usually means 6 hours of sleep only if I'm lucky, and it generally means 4-5.  It's doable, but as I get older, it just means I'm done for the night after a Turn & Burn, usually.  Work 20 hours in a 28 hour period, and then come home and crash.

Now, the solution is to put a day off between night shifts and open shifts.  Which is the best I can come up with, but that day after 2 or 3 closing shifts, knowing that you have to get up at 5:15 the day following, it can feel like half a day off.   Usually, I make myself get up at 7 after the closing shift, and that usually does the trick.  I forgot to set my alarm for Wednesday, though.  So I slept until 8:45.

Went to bed at 10.  Wide awake at 2:45, after weird dreams about camping with my friend Julie.  In the dream, it was just after the Superflu from The Stand had hit.

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It's a weird new world without Dad.  We keep struggling to find the new normal.  I still call and check on Mom a bit.  I'm going over to mow a bit Friday, and take trash to the dump.

Went with Mom last week to Nashville.  She got to testify in front of a Tennessee Senate Committee about a bill that would seek to change the language used by Tennessee Donor Services contacts the next of kin of a family regarding tissue donation.  We consented to donating Dad's tissue, but the decision was made in time of duress and without our complete knowledge of what they were looking to harvest.  Even a few minutes later, it hit us that they couldn't be harvesting organs, since the body had to be kept alive for organs to be viable.

What the folks are doing isn't wrong, or bad.  It just wasn't made completely clear to us at the time, and that's what Mom and the sponsors of the bill are looking to clear up some of the language, and let the family of the deceased know in clearest terms what is being harvested.

Here she is sitting down to testify.  It was an experience watching that whole thing go down.  The chaos in suitjackets of people in the legislative plaza.  

I felt like the committee didn't give Mom and Sonny (the gentleman with her) enough time to speak their case, and there's a small part of me that thinks it was intentional--we were told those bills with witnesses would go first, and they did not....this bill was the last presented, and were rushed for time because the Education Committee was scheduled to take the room.  Mom did get to speak her peace, though, and I was tremendously proud of her.

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It's been more than a month, now.  I've dreamed of Dad once.  I kinda expected to dream more of him.  I'm kinda sad about that, but then the one dream I did have him left me wrecked.

Part of me wants to believe that dreaming of somebody you lost is part of their coming to say goodbye.  Even pets.  I was told that when I was little, and it's something that I've held on to.

Part of me believes that.  Maybe a large part.

It might be silly, but I'm allowed to believe silly things, even if the other part of me believes it's just random firings in the brain during REM sleep.

I'd like to be able to talk to him.  One more time.  Hear him say "Hey, Bud."  Even if it were a dream.

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Shyam and I did go to see Logan a couple weeks ago, and it was as good as advertised.  I've never been the big Wolverine fan that a lot of people are, despite years of X-Men fandom.  I've thought character overwrought and not nearly as interesting as people want to believe.  I thought he was most well done in those Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne years of Uncanny X-Men.

SPOILER ALERT, DUMBELLS:

Still, the movie was quite good.  It had been spoiled for me, so his sacrifice at the end of the flick didn't hit me as hard as I was afraid it would.  I was more impacted by a scene near the middle of the flick.  Logan is carrying Charles up the stairs of the home they're staying in.  The charade they've taken is that Charles is Logan's father, an aspect of their relationship that gets touched on from time to time.  For some reason, when Logan was carrying Charles up the stairs, I started cryiing.

I haven't been to a movie by myself, yet.  He was my movie buddy, and we'd hit a couple a month.  Sometimes more in the summer.  It might be hard to go, for a little while.

I still haven't gone to see Kong: Skull Island.

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Trying to make my work schedule comply with my desire to hit Marble City Comiccon up in Knoxville.  I don't think it's going to work.  We've got a floor strip, and the con won't open until 10.  I'm scheduled to go in at 12 that day.  Which sucks.

It's a small con, but usually has a good vendor selection.  Sorry I'm going to miss it.