I've got about thirty minutes until I have to start getting ready for a doctor's appointment at 11:00 o'clock this morning. My usual toilette, as it were...shower, application of deodorant & cologne, the combing and drying of the hair, the cleaning of the glasses.
This one is with my psychiatrist in OKC, and though I'm usually not apprehensive about these visits (which I generally enjoy), I have to say that there's something about this one that seems different. I couldn't tell you what it is, I don't know myself. But I had a very difficult time getting asleep and staying that way last night, even with the Ambien I take. It's the first time that drug has come close to failing me. I chalk it up to the fact that I had way too much caffeine yesterday. Three cups of coffee in the morning and a big can of Monster "energy supplement" before I mowed the lawn in the afternoon (the lawn looks damned good, by the way).
Still, caffeine hasn't generally kept the Ambien from knocking me out. That's why I think it was partly the sheer volume of it that affected it's ability to send me off blissfully to dream-land.
Another factor, no doubt, was all the song lyrics running through my mind. You see, today I'm going to visit Red and I'm going to show him the two new songs I wrote (he'll show me a couple he's composed recently as well). So for the longest time I went over the lyrics in my mind trying to memorize them so I wouldn't have to use my notebook as a crutch. On and on and on they went, floating through the tunnels of my mind, sticking there tenuously, then more firmly until I knew that I'd memorized them. Then, just like a musician practices on his instrument, I began to roll them over in my mind, tweaking melodies, considering slight variations on a word or two here and there, making sure that when I played them for Red it would sound like I'd written these songs years ago, that they were from the fecund time when I wrote some of the songs he loves today ("The Ladder", "The Wait", "Bike Boy", "Walking Away", a few others).
We shall see, and it will be fun. Just like old times, I hope, only with a little more clarity and a lot less meandering, wasted time.
I haven't mentioned it here but I am NOT looking forward to the drive through OKC. As I told my psychiatrist, I get very paranoid about having to drive. But the weird thing is that once I get out on the highway and into the flow of traffic I don't seem to mind, actually sort of enjoy it.
I think it stems from the car wreck I had several years ago. That and seeing a bad car wreck directly in front of me in OKC while driving back home. It didn't help at that time that I was high on weed, paranoid enough already with a quarter sack stuffed down in my sock. Yeah, I left the scene of an accident. I felt guilty about that for a long time. But what could I do? I was driving impaired in the first place.
Thank God I'll never drive stoned again. Even though I still get skittish around the big eighteen wheel rigs and the speedballs, it's not so bad and it's NOTHING compared to the nightmare that is marijuana influenced motoring.
It's been said before, but for me it's really true. I'm not nearly as worried about my own driving as I am about others. Honestly, in the words of "Rain Man", I'm an excellent driver. But God save me from those bastards who aren't, and they are legion.
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