It’s about all that I have the energy to do today. It’s better than staring at the seconds ticking away on a clock. It stays in one place. Just a blinking black line on a white screen, and it requires nothing…no awareness of time or place, no thoughts, no input. I spent a better part of the morning and this afternoon with this cursor. Half-heartedly tapping at a few keys, but otherwise, not moving.

I feel that something is on its way, lumbering towards me just out of sight. Then I think that perhaps it’s just my bored imagination creating something for me to dread, fear, or even…possibly…to look forward to. I have no opinion, either way. No expectations. I’m too tired for opinions, too tired for conversation. I’m too tired to measure the coffee or plug in the coffee maker, too tired to look for my Blistex, too tired to light a match.

Few thoughts have slunk by, yet I’m too tired to entertain them, offer them a chair or a drink, examine them for ticks, question them or even, to their utter chagrin, acknowledge them. They are, however, the same dodgy little (sometimes not so little) thoughts that creep up more often then others. They are strange little beasts. If my gray little brain (I’m not so confident as to call it white…don’t think there’s too much white up there sometimes…unless of course you count the little white corner where Woolf, Shakespeare, and their friends meet up for tea) had doors these sneaky little buggers would be hiding behind them, jumping out when I’ve come home after a long day at work and want nothing more than a glass of wine and some peace and quiet. So today they have stopped by, uninvited as usual. They pester and they nag.

I don’t know all of their names, to be sure. There’s usually the one I call ‘Why Do I Work So Hard, So Often, and What’s the Point?’ then there’s always ‘What’s Your Problem?’ ‘What The Hell Are You Going To Do With Your Life?’ and of course the famous ‘You Should Have Used A Sick Day Today.’ The one I hate is not more than a toddler. She walks around in a diaper and keeps asking, as toddlers always do ‘WHY?’ in a very shrill, repetitive matter. ‘WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?’

So yes, they’ve all slunk in, jumped out of closets and such, attempted to make me think and work and talk and solve. I had none of it. I ignored them until they sulked away. Sometimes, when I’m feeling a bit more spunky, I might cuss them out, or demonstrate some mad street fighting skills that make them realize that I’m a girl to be reckoned with (of course…sometimes…my efforts just make them laugh…and that WHY? WHY? WHY? creature has the most annoying little giggle).

Of course, the one that has been plaguing me the most these days is the one I’ve come to know as ‘Why The Hell Are You So Dreading This Vacation? Why Are You Afraid To Leave? What Do You Have Here That’s So Important?’ That guy has really been bugging me. I’m pretty sure that he’s friends with that other dude, what’s his name, oh…it’s ‘Why Do You Still Live Here?’ Sheesh, that guy is a real piece of work.

So anyway, like I was saying before I was sidetracked, I’m just too tired to deal with them. If you looked at me, you’d see it too. Days can be tiresome like that. They just keep coming, one after another, and they’re never exactly satisfactory, are they? Well yes, I suppose, they can be. They used to be for me, too, but that was a long time ago. That was before the days when I was too tired to do more than drag myself out of bed, an hour late for work, drag a brush through my wild-woman hair (it’s so long now…too long…but then calling, making an appointment, and actually going to get it cut are another story…requiring large amounts ambition and, well, I said I was tired, weren’t you listening?).

So now that I’ve stopped staring at this friendly, blinky little cursor enough to watch it glide over all of these little letters, I think I can summon up the energy to entertain just one of those little thoughts. Would you like to meet him? Well, I haven’t really named him, you see, he comes in many different ways. Sometimes he’s more of a ‘Close Your Eyes And Sleep On Your Desk, No One Will Notice’ sort of man, but usually he sort of gives me an irresistible image in my mind, the only one I find comforting on most days. Would you like to see it? OK, I’ll show you.

It’s simpler than you might think, you see. It’s the Periwinkle blue of my cotton bed sheets, and you can smell them, too. Like Downy, Lavender, and that impossible to define and yet most heavenly smell that I know, I call it, “Linen Closet.” There is a mound of clean and yet messy, wrinkled up blankets piled on top. On the nightstand (this is a new development…I don’t really have a nightstand), there is a lamp and a pile of books that smell perfectly bookish and feel comforting in my hands. The dogs are there, and when I’m lying in that messy blue bed there is usually a muzzle and a single paw on the back of my knee, and another donut-shaped dog somewhere near my lower back. So that thought comes by, and I just want to crawl into that bed for, oh well, I guess I’d have to say forever.

Then, when I fall asleep and start to dream, the idea that got me here in the first place drops by again. Now that I think about it, he looks a bit like Sam, doesn’t he? Only a bit softer, no? Around the eyes? And that sadness that you could see even when he smiled, remember that? Well, that’s gone too.

So perhaps you can understand, can’t you, that when things become this tiresome, I just want to slip away to that perfect blue, doggy, bookish, no-longer-lonely heaven…and just dream. The cursor and I agree. That may be the only thing that I’m not too tired for.