Who Decided This Pleasure was Guilty?

My name is Kelly and I am a napper.

“Hi Kelly.”

There are few things that are so enjoyable, and feel so verboten, yet, aren’t actually bad for you, as a nap. Doubt that napping is looked down upon? Subtly mention that you catch a few winks in the middle of the day in your next corporate meeting, and check the reaction of your colleagues. That look isn’t admiration.

Naps are on my mind today because I’m craving one right now. Thanks to the nuisance of daylight saving time (a pox on your house, George Vernon Hudson), I’m unusually tired this afternoon. Add to that the wet, gray conditions outside, and crawling under the sheets sounds near heavenly.

But this situation is not my ordinary nap scenario. While napping as an antidote to sleepiness seems rather practical, it is not the napping in which I typically indulge. No, I’m a fan of the Sunday Afternoon Nap: the nap I take just because I can. What is it about crawling into bed in broad daylight that feels so decadent? I get into that bed every night, and rarely even notice it. But during the day . . . that’s self-indulgent delight. It’s the sense that I’m getting away with something; that time is wasting and I’m not doing anything useful; that any minute someone could call, and, catching the sleepiness in my voice, ask, “Did I wake you?”

So, in the end, I suppose I’m grateful that napping is frowned upon in the adult world. If it was acceptable--or heaven-forbid, encouraged--I wouldn’t enjoy it half as much.

Oh, The Humanity!

My employer happens to be on a health and environment kick. This week, the company announced that all facilities will become smoke-free over the course of the next 12 months. Kind of a big deal when you consider that we have more than 320,000 employees spread across 160 countries. Smoking was already prohibited inside buildings, so I didn’t really consider this all that revolutionary. Although it will be nice to walk to my car without having to go through the occasional cloud of smoke from the folks who prefer to smoke in the parking garage than go outside.

Apparently I misjudged my colleagues.

I have never seen the kind of reaction to any announcement that I’ve seen to the smoking ban. People are ranting about big brother, socialism, and 1984. The themes that seem to tie the ranting together are discrimination and the infringement of personal liberties, with a passing nod to Constitutional rights. One of my favorites was the guy who quoted Ben Franklin: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Now I don’t ususally like it when anyone claims to know the thoughts and intentions of those who lived centuries before us. More often than not, we tend to assume that the people we like and admire have intentions pretty close to our own, and that people we dislike have mothing but nefarious purposes. But I’m going to make an exception for myself. I’m going out on the limb to say that when the founders of this nation were crafting the documents we now hold (near) sacred, they were not thinking about the 21st century office worker’s right to smoke wherever they felt like it. I have a hard time equating a cigarrette during working hours on private property with essential liberty.

Am I missing something? Am I blindly allowing The Man to chip away at liberty, ignorant of the fact that the next thing to go will be something important to me? Or, as I suspect, will we be able to look back on this from some not-too-distant future, and realize that smoking has very little to do with liberty?

All Things Are Relative

I am one of those people who could never become a doctor—not because of the cadavers and blood, or the fact that I skipped my undergrad biology class about 90% of the time. No, I couldn’t become a doctor because I, like so many people, am easily convinced that I am sick. When primetime news shows and popular magazines discuss health topics, I inevitably start to display mysterious symptoms. And don’t even get me started on WebMD. I’ve had to limit myself to one visit a week. That site will convince anyone that the hangnail may in fact be fatal. Who wouldn’t blink when that warning “please seek emergency medical attention” flashes on the screen?

I’ve often wondered if I hold on to too much stuff. Despite donating carloads of items to charity every time I move (which is pretty often), I’m still amazed by how much stuff I have. And even though I’ve gotten better at parting with items of sentimental value but no real value, I still find myself holding onto things I have no use for. I’d begun to wonder if I had a problem with attachment to things. And then I saw Hoarders. Quite the opposite of my usual medical television experience, this show has me convinced that there is absolutely nothing wrong with me. Never tried to save a piece of furniture after mice had nested in it. Never held on to a collection of plastic bottle caps because the codes inside may earn a prize. Never had to tie myself down while I slept to make sure I didn’t slip into a pile of trash in the middle of the night. When I consider the possibilities, I’m downright sane.

This is one instance where a little medical knowledge has me convinced that I’m just fine. Now I just have to worry about this hangnail

Why Indeed

I’ve been thinking a lot about the summer of 2003 this last week. That July was the first time I remember hearing a song that has been recurring in the soundtrack of my life. It was a muggy night in San Diego, and Sarah and I had decided at the last minute to go to the outdoor concert. Over the next few months, the song became an anthem of sorts. I hear it now, and instantly I’m in my Subaru, heading south on 13th East in Salt Lake, trying to figure out how to get a job in Southern California; sometimes wondering what would happen if I just kept driving.

Before driving to Staten Island last weekend, I changed the CDs I’d had in my car for the last few months. On the way home, I found myself listening to this song that encapsulates my life yet again, drawn to it the same way I was six years ago. And I have to wonder, is it the song that brings these feelings flooding back, or am I drawn to this song because of what I’m feeling? I’m sure I’ve heard it in the years in between, but it hasn’t hit me the way it has this week.

Makes me think that this native is getting restless.

Strangers on a Train

After a lovely evening in New York City last Friday, I was delighted to find an empty row on the Metro North train back to Connecticut. I turned my iPod on, and by the time we were moving I was nearly asleep . . .

The next thing I knew a loud voice was coming over the seat back saying, “Seriously, you gotta turn that sh** off!” I was absolutely mortified. Had I just committed one of the deadly sins of mass transit? Could my fellow passengers actually hear the dulcet tones of the Beastie Boys? Was I listening to music at a volume so high that Christina would never speak to me again? I immediately paused the music and turned the volume down, but the shouting persisted. I took my earbuds out and quickly realized what all the fuss was about. Passed out in the seat in front of me were two people who had apparently set an alarm for 1:20am. A phone alarm. A loud, beeping phone alarm. And they were paying just as much attention to it as I pay to my alarm on a typical weekday morning. Which is to say, none at all.

Another passenger, I’ll call her Jane, took matters into her own hands—standing over them and doing her best to wake them without resorting to physical assault. Jane finally roused the woman just enough for her to assure Jane she didn’t have an alarm. Helpful. As the woman was drifting swiftly back to sleep, Jane immediately stepped in and gently coerced her into rifling through her companion’s pockets. No alarm in pocket one, so Rip Wan Winkle started to lean back. Again, Jane interceded and encouraged her to try another pocket. Apparently the alarm had been considerably muffled by the pocket, as now that the phone had been found and removed, it was distinctly louder. The woman looked at it as though she had never seen a phone before, but luckily, the increased volume of the beeping finally woke her cohort up. Jane instructed him to turn it off. He muttered something about the fact that the alarm was set so they wouldn’t miss their stop in Stamford. Stamford, as in my stop. Stamford, as in 1:56am. Demonstrating superb negotiating skills, Jane assured him that no one on the train would let them sleep through their stop, and then worked with him to figure out exactly how to silence that darned alarm.

As it turns out, they came mighty close to sleeping through their stop. Despite the best efforts of the people around them, they both fell back asleep no less than three times in the 90 seconds before the train pulled into the station.

And that is why I don’t dare sleep on the train. Unless I’m really really tired. Then I definitely don’t sleep on the train.

Out of Theory, Into Reality

My mornings have been starting later and later these days. I could come up with all sorts of reasons for this: staying up too late, lack of motivation to go to work, a really comfortable bed that has recently been enhanced by an electric blanket. But in reality, I quote the immortal words of The Housemartins to explain this phenomenon:

You can put it down to lack of patience
You can put it down to lack of sleep
But it’s in my head to stay in bed
Tucked under the sheets

And even after relenting to the umpteenth snooze alarm, I find myself distracted by all sorts of little things instead of actually getting ready for the day. This morning I decided to try on the two pairs of shoes that have been sitting by the front door, waiting to be returned, for the better part of the month. Yes, I had already tried them on twice since purchasing them, and both times deemed that both pairs should be returned. But, since I was actually planning on returning them today during my lunch, I decided I better be sure. I wouldn’t want to place too little thought into such an important decision.

I took the first pair out of the box, then realized that I shouldn’t try them on with bare feet, so I proceeded to my bedroom to retrieve a pair of socks. Nearly there, I was overcome by the piercing shriek of an alarm. I quickly surmised that this was not the smoke alarm for my apartment, but rather the building alarm. The volume of this alarm made Beethoven jump out of his grave and say “What’s the racket?!?” I stood in my room with a shoe in one hand and a pair of socks in the other, and realized that the question “If your house was on fire, what would you grab?” had some very real implications.

Mind you, I didn’t smell any smoke and certainly didn’t see any flames lapping at the window; but in a building the size and structure of mine, there’s simply no way of telling what’s going on around the corner. And who knows how many of my neighbors smoke in bed and leave rooms full of lit candles unattended for hours?

How did I answer this age-old conundrum? I put on a pair of warm shoes, grabbed my best winter coat and scarf, and threw my cell phone and my car key into my purse before locking the door behind me. Once outside, my neighbors and I were informed that one of the maintenance men had hit the fire alarm with a dumpster. As I trudged back upstairs, I began to think of all the things I didn’t grab. If I really wasn’t ever going to see my apartment again, it may have been nice to be wearing clothing other than my pajamas. A pair of contacts would have been helpful too.

After thinking about this a little more, it would have been nice to grab some of the Christmas presents that are so neatly wrapped and displayed in the living room. My journals would have been another nice grab. Or my photo albums; or my family history. Or even the 50gb flash drive that has almost every electronic file of value in my life. But I didn’t take any of those things.

When I finally left for work, I picked up the shoes and did in fact return them today over lunch. Wouldn’t want to lose them in the next emergency.

Enough Sense to Come In

One of the things I love about living in Stamford is that I get to indulge my city-living fantasies, while enjoying the comforts of suburbia. Transit strikes have no effect on my morning commute. I can still see the stars at night. And when I go to the store, I can buy as many heavy items as I like since I’ll just be putting them in the trunk to transport them home. On the flip side, pretty much everything I need is within reasonable walking distance from my apartment. Library? Check. At least a dozen restaurants? Check. Shopping mall? Check. Train station? Technically, check; but the prospect of walking under I-95 keeps me from trying that one.

Last night I walked to the mall to do a little Christmas shopping. While I was there, I noticed there was a watch shop, so I decided to ask them how much it would cost to size the watch I was wearing. This is the watch I received as a ten-year anniversary gift from my employer. For more than a year this watch has been close to falling off since it is so large. I’ve considered taking it to a jeweler, but hadn’t because I am so che . . . make that financially responsible. It cost $10 and took less than 5 minutes, and now my watch fits like a watch instead of a bangle. Yes, I’m feeling a little silly for not having asked the question sooner.

I finished my shopping and exited the mall to head home, when it hit me. Make that, the rain hit me. Turns out there is a down side to this pseudo-urban life, and it involves standing on a corner with no umbrella, waiting for the world’s longest light to change.