You're Not Getting Older, You're Getting Tireder

Val is tired tonight, my friends. Tired, like a marathon runner named Jean-Paul whose alarm was thwarted by a fuse blown by a hot tub.

Getting to school today was a bit like crossing the wide prairie with my lover Ike, two yoke of oxen, one spotted hog, a tall Shanghai rooster, and an old yeller dog. There was road resurfacing on two of the three ways I can get there. The third way is really not an option, miles out of my way, through territory of which I am unfamiliar. I guess I could do it if it meant losing my job. But it didn't, so I took the second of the two work zones. Val does not like disorder and change. It's draining.

Just walking from T-Hoe on the school parking lot into the building proper was a Herculean task. Halfway up the sidewalk, I wanted to lay down in the newly-sprouted blades of grass around the downspout. Who would know? Besides everybody watching me on the camera, and those faculty who pulled up after I sank into a Rip Van Winkle slumber. I was as drowsy as Dorothy in a field of poppies. It was as if Morpheus himself had hopped onto my back and wrapped his arms around me. Commercial Lunesta moths circled my head like stars around the noggin of a poorly-skilled cartoon boxer.

Now that I'm getting on in years, perhaps five hours of sleep per night is not quite enough.