Mom and Laura Have a Night Out

Mom and I went to Bloomington this weekend, partly to look around at the pretty and partly to see if I felt like Bloomington was a livable place. We had tons of fun, as we usually do together.

But whenever Mom and I go to a new city to visit, there is this thing that happens.

We first noticed it when she emerged from a Union Station bookstore in D.C., a victorious look on her face, a plastic bag clutched in her hands.

"Look!" She proclaimed, "It's a walking guide of the city!"

So Mom led Paul and I on an hours-long walk. It was like the walks that end at a mass grave site, only this time there was no open chasm awaiting us, just crippling leg pain and a lost child at the Vietnam Memorial. See, the book was great, it just didn't account for the huge amount of construction going on at the various memorials when we took our trip. They had totally blocked off something like half of the mall, so you had to walk around the blocked portion, waving at Mr. Lincoln from far away, then skirting some kind of arts fair, a giant hole in the ground, and the site of that weekend's fireworks.

We walked most of the day and were still unable to complete 3/4 of the "walking tour." I think that walking tour book was for backpackers, or Everest-climbers, or HEALTHY people, and I am a dedicated lounger, not a hiker.

There were even tears on this walk. TEARS. Not mine. Mom's, what with the Vietnam Memorial, and the lost kid cried, but STILL. TEARS. Tears and the kind of agony that makes you fall when you try to get out of bed the next morning.

But D.C. was nothing to London.

Mom looked out of our hostel and saw the Tower in the distance. We, I should mention, were staying in a former dormitory for a boys' choir near St. Paul's Cathedral. We walked and walked, but the Tower never got any closer. We were along the Thames, and there were these little docks, and bridges, and still, no Tower. As night fell, we turned around and trudged back.

I later found out that tons of hideous, gristly murders have taken place right along the river walk. Isn't that lovely? Really, watch some BBC! You will be as horrified as I was. This is where my mother takes me, to go get murdered on the river walk!

This seems to happen to us every time we go on a trip. We try not to let it happen, but there we are, walking ten miles because the good pastries are on THAT street and we want GOOD pastries.

On our Bloomington trip, it started either with the lady at the crosswalk saying, "Five or six blocks...?" Or with me saying, "Nah, let's just walk it. We don't need to get the car."

We were looking for a pharmacy, because Mom had a headache and wanted some Ibuprofen PM. So we walked. And five blocks became ten. And ten blocks became fifteen. And still nothing.

Lesser women might have given up. But no, not my mother and I. We kept going. Because we knew after 15 blocks, we would never sleep without some kind of pain reliever for the new agonies we discovered on our walk.

Meanwhile, I had a different dilemma. I was wearing adorable shoes. You know what that means. So while my shoes were being adorable, they were also not being very functional as shoes. I had to arch my foot to keep them on, and I STILL kept falling out of them and into holes. There are a lot of holes in Bloomington.

We stopped at a Waffle House, where Mom and Dad had enjoyed meals back when they were in school at I.U. But seriously, the Waffle House looked abandoned, like there was a natural disaster we didn't know about. It was a Ghost Town Waffle House. I think I saw a tumbleweed in the parking lot.

Armed with more directions, we went on. Still, after several blocks, nothing.

Now: Where was the flippin' pharmacy? College students need pain relief, right? I mean, I know I had headaches back in college, and stomach aches, and other aches, and I went to the pharmacy to get treatments for my various maladies. But nooooo. I.U. kids don't get sick. They're too busy being awesome.

We followed still more directions, passing under a bridge. I fell in some more holes. Then Mom leaned over to me.

"I think it smelled like urine down there," she whispered.

"We walked UNDER A BRIDGE," I replied. "What did you expect?"

We laughed so hard, we could not breathe. Then we found the CVS, got medicine, walked back, and collapsed in the hotel room, an hour and a half after we'd set out. My calves still feel like they're about to explode.

The moral of this story? Always pack your medications before you leave home. Or at least spring for a map.

Ask Me About My New Felted Slippers!

I finished another pair of the French Press Felted Slippers last night. But I started felting them too late, so I didn't get to sleep until something like 1:30 in the morning. I had to wake up at 6:00. This after a weekend of lying in bed, waiting for sleep.

Friday night I was curled up in bed, sleepless, listening to the rush of water and gurgles from the bathroom sink. As I waited for the evil person in the bathroom to be finished, I got angrier and angrier. Didn't this person know I had to work early in the morning? And it was way late. It was like TWO in the morning. And I couldn't sleep with all that NOISE.

It sounded maybe like someone was doing THIS:



I listened to more gurgles from the sink until finally, I'd had enough. I stormed out of my room and pounded on the bathroom door.

"Just a minute," Paul replied.

Paul.

Curse the fiend! He was the one ruining my life. He would have to PAY for what he'd done. He must have filled the tub with live waterfowl, to make that kind of noise. Didn't he understand how massively cruel he was being. He was destroying my will to go on. If he wanted to keep using water, he might as well have just killed me right then and there. It would have been more merciful. Jerk.

"You need to stop waiting this late to get ready for bed," I snapped. "You woke me up with all your noise, and now I'm lying there, and I have work tomorrow. You know I can hear all the noise from the bathroom in my room. The pipes are right next to my head! It's like you're bathing an elephant in there, with all of that splashing."

"I just got in here," Paul said curtly.

"No, you didn't," I replied. "I can hear everything. I heard you getting washed up, and it WOKE ME UP. You need to stop doing this. It's getting worse and worse."

"I haven't even flushed yet!" Paul seethed.

And as I stood there, bleary-eyed, I realized he was telling the truth.

You see, I'd heard the water running for what felt like hours. And the toilet had been flushed five, maybe six times. The sink had kept gurgling and gurgling, and I was sure I'd heard the bathtub filling up.

One person would not make all of that noise.

"Oh," I said, realizing the full impact of what had just happened.

"Just give me a minute," Paul growled.

"I am so sorry," I replied.

Silence was the only reply.

"I've been lying there listening to the water," I said. "But there was no water. I dreamed it all."

More silence.

"I thought it was going on too long. And it was. Because it was a dream. I'm sorry."

I went back to bed.

You see, I have a recurring semi-nightmare of not being able to fall asleep. I remain curled in bed, panicking more and more as I worry about the next day and how exhausted I know I'll be at work. The dream, like all of my dreams, is so vivid that I fail to realize it is a dream until I wake up. Then I think, Gee, I'm pretty well rested for someone who didn't get any sleep last-- And I know that it was the same dream again.

Lately, I've been trying something called lucid dreaming. I will be lying there, thinking I'm stuck awake when I need to sleep, and as a test, I try thinking about, say, a new book from a favorite author. If the dream changes at all (like, I see the book or start dreaming about a library or something like that), I know I am actually asleep. It's like a wakeness test for Dreaming Laura. It keeps me from spending my whole night dreaming the same miserable Insomnia-Dream.

But this thing was new. It was my normal nightmare, but with water gurgling. My dream had reached a new low. And Paul was the innocent victim.

When I got back to bed, I fell asleep almost immediately. But when I woke up that morning, I started thinking about Poor Paulie. I had totally screamed at him, and for no reason at all. He was innocent. All he'd been ding was...well, using the bathroom, and I had been horrible.

Clearly, I am the worst sister in the world.

I waited patiently for Paul's normal wake-up time, and I gave him a bit more time after that to be fully conscious (we are not morning people). Then I called him and apologized again. Poor Paul. He so did not deserve my rage.

After all that, two more nights of minimal sleep were not really a good idea. But what did I care? I had a giant hole in my slipper. That had to be fixed, before I stepped on something cold, like the basement floor, and the cold surface made my foot icy cold through the fist-sized hole in the sole of my slipper. Okay. Maybe not fist-sized. But it's definitely quarter-sized. Silver dollar, maybe.

My new slippers are lovely. They're drying now. I have buttons waiting. But the whole sleep situation makes me regret felting them. I am exhausted.

I have also watched too many episodes of The Cosby Show in a row, while running up and down the basement stairs to check on the felting process. I need to buy tennis balls so I can dump them in the washing machine and speed the whole process up considerably.

Now I'm just sit here, wishing I knew how to make coffee that didn't taste like feet. I'm sure this will be worth it tomorrow, when I can pull on new comfy slippers. But right now, I'm exhausted. Knitters have demanding schedules.