Sleep, Sweet Sleep (And Cell Phones on the Toilet)

I got enough sleep for the first time in a week last night. It was a weird feeling this morning (even if the need to slap the snooze multiple times was exceedingly familiar) when I got up and felt happy and rested. The best way for me to know that I actually got enough sleep is that I sing in the shower. If I shower silently, I know I’m going to have a rough day of bitterness and snippiness. If I find myself belting out 80s hair metal (Here I am, will you send me an angel?), bluegrass (There’s a lake of stew and of whiskey too. You can paddle all around them in a big canoe), and my best impersonation of Johnny Cash singing “Hurt”, then I know the day’s going to be a good one.

Today was one of those latter days where the shower tiles shook and the plastic curtain billowed against my melodic exaltations. I was actually in a good mood for the first morning this week. I was able to smile at the utter look of concentration on E’s face as he tried to out bounce his latest record for bouncing in his new bouncer. I teased my wife and wasn’t irritated in the least by her concerns over our tardiness (she also kept hitting the snooze this morning and we were running a good 20 minutes late). Even my lateness failed to get me in my normal pissy morning mood. Instead, I made up songs about the evilness of my wife’s inner soul and told my wife a story about E telling his daycare lady to shut up and threatening to beat me down. It was a very funny story in its original form, but, alas, I didn’t write it down, so you just have to trust me.

Even the distinct lack of brilliance exhibited by my students that was lamented in yesterday’s bleak post failed to faze me and I pushed on blithely and in good spirits, all the while listening to the inner radio that piped “Killing Floor Blues” and “Natural Ones” into my inner ear. I’m even wiggling in my seat right now as I type this, listening to a live version of The Shins’ “Phantom Limb” coming from my Last.fm radio station. I do not dance.

I’m not so sure my good moods are always pleasant for K, however. I’m a noisy, silly, chattery person when happy. I make up stories, ramble on, get distracted, and sing at the top of my lungs both songs real and imaginary. My silliness is often directed at her, largely because I know she’s a patient soul and I feel more comfortable with her than with any other person I’ve ever known. She even likes me occasionally at times like this. The only thing is that she didn’t share my restful sleep last night and wasn’t quite in as good of a mood. That’s ok; she only had to put up with my joyfulness for 15 minutes or so until we dropped off E and made it to school. By the time I pick her up from school to head home, she’ll have woken up enough to enjoy me again as long as the rest of the day hasn’t ground me down too much by then.
Another benefit of last night’s wondrous rest is that my right eyelid isn’t twitching quite as much. For the past four or five days it’s been beating out its own little rhythm against my optical orb. For some reason the twitching hasn’t yet completely subsided, but it has decreased in frequency from constant to occasional and I can fully appreciate that.

I also fully appreciate my good mood for its allowing me to fully appreciate something I just experienced in the restroom. One of the quirks of teaching is its training of one’s waste systems to follow a schedule. It being second block at the time of this writing, I had to go take a leak. I head into the teacher’s restroom (I refuse to use anything that a student has touched. It’s not a germ phobia, I just think too highly of myself to use their facilities), and I notice that there’s someone sitting in the last stall. The door is closed, so I discern this from the fact their feet are pointing the wrong way and the positioning of their pants above said feet. I guess they really could have been the feet of a freak wearing baggy pants, but I’m working the probabilities here. Anyway, while I’m prepping myself for the release of liquid waste (in other words unbuckling my belt), I hear the sitter’s (or freak’s if that’s the case) phone go off. I know it’s not mine. I never have my phone with me in public unless I have a very specific reason to need it. That’s not really all that weird (although I do think it a bit unprofessional to have a phone on while at school, and how is he getting reception inside the building? What service does he have?) At least it’s not all that weird until he answers it. He’s a couple of sentences into his conversation when I flush and head over to wash my hands. I’m really trying not to belly laugh here and manage to keep my exhibition of mirth down to a silently shaking chuckle. I don’t think I would have even noticed in one of my self-centered I’m-too-sleepy-to-be-here moods.

I did notice he started talking louder while I was washing my hands. I guess he was trying to cover the water sounds so the person on the other end of the conversation didn’t know where he was at the moment. I’m sorry, dude; you’re the dumbass who answered your cell phone while sitting on the toilet. I’m not going to wait to flush and wash just because you’re on the phone.

That pretty much made my day, I think.