Tired Around The Eyes

Fell asleep again with the boy. That means waking up at roughly midnight, wide awake, overheated. One would think that in the next two to three hours, it would be possible for me to clean the kitchen. It is not. Too many books to read, magazines. Rereading Bryson’s Notes From A Small Island (not getting very far very fast), making a big dent in my Special Top Secret Assignment, but look the new New Yorker, Rik Hertzberg, Seymour Hersh, Louis Menand, Peter Schjeldahl all in this week–are they doing it to me on purpose? And a surprise: Finally a Margaret Talbot article I can actually read. (New Yorker editors have worked their most powerful ju-ju, something New York Times magazine editors never could do.) But I am falling behind. So I forced myself to bed at 2:30, with hopes of actually being asleep by 3. I pulled the futon couch open, because by this time nthe bed is full of the wife and kids. The dog is brazen, climbs aboard, farts. An ungodly smell. The guinea pig down the hall makes a kind of constant rattling as it drinks from its little stainless tube with the ball bearing in the end. The dog dreams heavily and all four paws are trotting against my back. In the morning, I ran around waking up kids, only to be shushed by the wife. No school today. Well, that gives me a good solid hour to clean the kitchen, which is piled high with pots and pans. When I finally get to the bottom, both sinks are empty. Their little strainer plugs are full–one side rice, the other side beans. I thought to myself: A complete protein!