POSSIBLY I'M A BEAR?

I don't know what's going on, but lately, as it gets dark earlier and earlier in the evening, I find myself stonking out on the couch hours before I would normally go to sleep in my bed, like human beings do.  This seems to happen every winter, and no matter how much I fight it, I can't stop it.  My late fall/winter evenings tend to go like this:

6:30 p.m. - Work is over! I have the whole evening ahead of me!

7:00 p.m. - Look at me run. . . er, power-walking on this treadmill and reading a book at the same time.  I'm multitasking!

7:30 p.m. - Hungry. . . so hungry. . .

8:00 p.m. - SOUP!

8:30 p.m. - The sun has been down for a few hours and my apartment has turned into the the ice planet Hoth.  Find slippers.  Find giant fleece bathrobe I got from the men's department at Target, because apparently the makers of women's bathrobes don't think we need anything covered below our knees.  Don bathrobe, slippers, and several blankets.  Station self on couch with library school text book and highlighter.  Time for studying!

8:35 p.m. - Cats appear and fall asleep on me/textbook.

8:40 p.m. - Finally manage not to be bone-achingly cold.

8:45 p.m. - Head-drooping falling-asleep thing. Accidentally highlight random words in a vertical line on the page. The cats look so peaceful, all curled up with their tails over their noses.  Maybe a little nap wouldn't hurt. . .

8:50 p.m. - No! Must finish homework!  Reread passage on business directories several times without understanding anything.

9:00 p.m. - Wake up with highlighter stains on my hands, textbook on the floor, and cats using my head as a staging ground for their latest mutual bath.  Give up and fall asleep on the couch.

9:45 p.m. - Jeremy: "Are you going to sleep out here again?"

Me: "No, of course not. I'm just taking a nap."

Jeremy: "Okay, do you want me to wake you up in half an hour?"

Me: "Okay."

10:15 p.m. - Jeremy: "Hey, wake up."

Me: "Meh-muh."

Jeremy: "Seriously, wake up."

Me: "Hrrrrrnnnnn. . ."

10:30 p.m. - Jeremy: "Hey, you told me to wake you up!"

Me: "Wha. . .? Why are you doing this to me?! You're so mean!" (falls asleep again)

1 a.m. - Jeremy: "Okay, I'm going to bed.  Are you going to sleep out here?"

Me: "Hhhzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzznnnnn. . ."

This literally seems to be out of my control.  It's as if I have bear or raccoon or hedgehog metabolism, and my body is slowing down for the winter.  I can't think of any other explanation for it.  It wouldn't be so bad if I could wake up skinny and craving fresh salmon in the spring, but no, I'm expected to FUNCTION all winter long.  I'm supposed to DRIVE A CAR and BUY GROCERIES and KEEP MY HOUSE CLEAN, when all my brain wants to do is hunker down in its den for the winter.  On the plus side, though, if I can stay awake during normal human hours all winter, I'm far less likely to be hit with animal control tranq darts when I finally wander out in the spring.

NEW TABS, NEW FICTION: "SWAMP CITY LAMENT"

Hey, have you noticed there are now tabs up at the top of the page?  Blogger is getting progressively more awesome and making me feel more like I have a real web site, not just a place to dump pictures of my cats being weird and/or adorable.  I now have a "Published Works" tab. (I agonized over what to call that for a long time.  "Bibliography?"  Too snooty and academic.  "Stuff I've Written?"  Hmm. . . maybe I need something that indicates I have a better command of the English language than a fourth-grader.  Actually, now that I think about it, some of the fourth-graders I know are more articulate than that.  Anyway,  "Published Works" is what I finally settled on, so I hope it isn't too annoyingly pretentious.)

If you click on the new tab, you'll see some exciting news -- I have a new story, "Swamp City Lament," coming out in the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  I found this sneak peek at the cover on their Facebook page.  Look at that! A skeleton!  Now you know you want to read it.

IN WHICH I GO TO THE ZOO

Jeremy and I were down in High Point for a friend's wedding this weekend, so we decided to stop in and visit the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro.  I used to absolutely LOATHE the zoo, mainly because my parents would drag me there as a de facto babysitter for my younger siblings when I was a teenager.  There is nothing a thirteen-year-old girl could hate more than being frog-marched into several hundred acres of swelteringly hot, screaming child-ridden, no-we-won't-buy-you-a-bottled-water-for-$2.75-plagued zoological hellscape and being told to push a stroller around.  It doesn't help when said thirteen-year-old looks several years older than she is and keeps getting dirty looks from disapproving adults who think she's a teen mom.  Getting to see some giraffes doesn't make up for that kind of agony.  On one occasion during my Star Wars obsession phase, I spent our zoo visit pretending I was part of the Rebel Alliance and my parents were members of the evil Galactic Empire who had captured me and spirited me away to their secret zoo base in an attempt to torture information out of me.

But somewhere in the intervening years, I started loving the zoo.  I think it might have happened when my siblings were old enough to walk around the zoo under their own power, or possibly when I left for college and was no longer responsible for making sure they didn't fall into the seal tank and drown.  Since that time, I've been to the London Zoo and the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, and had the best time of my life.  Without anyone to babysit, I turn into a giant ten-year-old.  "Omigod, look at the polar bear! He has a bucket!", "The elephant is covered in mud!", "Look at the baby penguin!", "Aaaauuuggghh!  Lemurs!"  (Lemurs are so cute they rob me of the ability to form sentences.)

So I was excited to visit the North Carolina Zoo, which is notable for keeping large, comfortable habitats for its animals, and generally being a top-notch, professionally-run zoo.  We arrived at noon and spent the next five hours wandering the zoo's grounds.  Some of the animals were asleep, but not the sea lion, which was showing off and preening and generally being a great, big, sea-mammal-y prima donna.  The crocodiles were napping, the ocelot just stared at us, and the otter was a no-show, but the sea lion?  The sea lion was a great big showboat.  I'm surprised it wasn't carrying a boom box blasting the music from Fame as it swanned across the underwater viewing area, whiskers undulating luxuriously in the current.

Prima donna sea lion: Exhibit A.

 We started in the North America exhibit and trekked through several miles of path all the way to the Africa exhibit.

SCARLET IBIS!

RED RIVER HOG!

ZEBRA!

ELEPHANT!

I was most excited about the elephants.

Jeremy wanted to see the rhinoceroses, though.  They were supposedly in the same habitat as the elephants, but we couldn't find them anywhere.  We took the winding path along the side of the immense grassy fields where the elephants, antelope, and rhinos were kept, stopping at every view point along the way.  No rhinos.  Lots of antelope and faux termite mounds, but no rhinos.  Exhausted, we stopped, ate an apple, and discussed taking the shuttle back to the parking lot beside the North America exhibit (several miles of path away), where our car was parked.  But by the time we finished the apple, we thought, NO! We are going to see find the rhinos if it kills us.  High on fructose, we slogged uphill to the final lookout point beside the Africa pavilion, where the zoo had an exhibit on violets we'd been avoiding in favor of all the exotic wildlife napping in the shade.  And there. . .

RHINOCEROSES!

Mission accomplished.  We started back to the North America exhibit.  Unfortunately, we hadn't noticed on the way in that the path would be uphill all the way back, but we were so flush with success from our rhinoceros sighting that we didn't really mind.  (Not then, anyway.  My legs felt like they had stopped communicating with my brain around the time we got back to the car.)  We even got to see that showy sea lion on the way out.

Prima donna sea lion: Exhibit B.

So, lessons learned about the zoo: Sea lions are show-offs, apples will make you feel invincible, don't make your thirteen-year-old push the baby stroller, bring money for water, and finally, don't underestimate the zoo's power to win you back.