Stranger in the Night

November 10, 2008

I had had a couple of nice days visiting with the grandkids. I missed tv--they don't have one--and was removed from my computer for two days, so I'd spent a few hours catching up on what I could from the reruns of the Sunday morning political rehashes, plus Property Virgins on HGTV. I was ready for bed when that was over.

Fell asleep expecting as good a night's rest as I have described to you in a previous post. I would have achieved this but for a strange chime at about 1 A.M. It was not the alarm clock, as I first thought, but a brief musical sprinkling that I didn't recognize. I lay awake long after it was over trying to identify the electronic source of my disturbance. At length I remembered, it was my cell phone. Not a phone call, but the little sound signaling that I am getting a text message.

I got a series of text messages before when my brother was in the hospital and my sister-in-law, distraught in a waiting room, distracted herself by texting everybody she could think of. At that point I had no idea of how to return a message to her and found her late-night communications distressing. Later, when relocating to a new apartment, I had gotten my previous domicile rented to a young woman who used texting all the time and showed me how to receive and send the messages when necessary. However, I seldom do it and get so little use from my cell phone I can only assume my call is an emergency. I lay awake trying to decide whether to check the text message.

I decided at last to check it out. It was a stranger in the night, and I don't mean Frank Sinatra. Seems my message had come from itusagb@gastrodocs.net and it read, "/yo/hey mate Market Wizard stock African Diamond Co AFDM" Just what I needed to be awakened in the middle of the night to find.

Anyway, I was awake now, and, contrary to my post about how easy it is to fall asleep again, it clearly wasn't going to be easy this time. I checked out a rerun of Meet the Press, channel surfed a little--there was a wonderful show on PBS about monkeys--and turned back into the bed where I lay for hours with my eyes closed telling myself it didn't matter whether or not I fell asleep. At last I did fall asleep, and woke up about 7:30 feeling tired and having no idea how much sleep I'd gotten (or how much I'd missed). I vowed to write a post about the stranger in the night on the blog, get to the gym, and try once more to have a normal day. I'll let you know how that comes out.