Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Howling at the Moon: And Other Conspiracy Theories

DSFD: Daylight Savings Fatigue Disorder

The switch to Daylight Savings Time has totally messed with my groove. Honestly.

Rather than retreating to the safe harbor of my writing cave this morning, or the endorphin-producing activities associated with a trip to the gym, I headed back to bed as soon as I got child #2 on the big yellow bus. When I awoke, only moderately refreshed, I headed out to my back yard with long, yellow rubber gloves and a plastic bag.

Yes, I spent my first wakeful hours scooping dog poo into the bag. Our vet says it is the best digging deterrent for our dog. So I picked up the poo and placed stinky, rain-mushed clumps of it amidst the trenches my sweet Aussie Shepherd/Lab mix has dug in our newly landscaped back yard on her eternal quest for the MOLE. Wow. What a run-on sentence.

She's a great mole-hunter, our Vivvi. Last year she unearthed and rid our yard of more than fifteen of the creepy little critters. But while Vivvi's tactics are both effective and enthusiastic, they are also somewhat, ahem, destructive. It was Vivvi's digging which necessitated the new landscaping, the expensive grass seed mix, and the hours of planning which resulted in last Autumn's verdant carpet in our back yard. But alas, the moles have returned. And Vivvi is determined to annihilate them.

And I am determined to save my yard. So onward my gloved hands!

And really, why not? Since Saturday night's dreaded clock switcharoo, my creative juices haven't start officially flowing until around noon, anyway. I figure may as well scoop poop as write it, eh?

Maybe it's the full moon. Maybe it's PMS. Maybe it's a conspiracy between governmental calendar dudes, the lunar cycle, and the Greater Council of Pituitary Hormones; a conspiracy of evil intent engineered specifically to freak me out.

Or not.

The good news is, while I'm not getting my writing groove on until afternoon, my reading groove is going steady. Dean Koontz's No Fear is excellent--I'm almost finished. Read it. I can't believe it took me so long to discover Mr. Koontz--so thanks to James Scott Bell for pointing me in a master storyteller's direction.

I'm also about half way through digesting Sailing Between the Stars by Steven James and about a third of the way into I'm Fine with God... It's Christians I Can't Stand by Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz. Both nonfiction titles. Both funny and thought-provoking, even in my brain-mushed state of DSFD.

And my kitchen floor still needs a significant amount of scrubbing. And there are dirty dishes in the sink. And every bed in my house is yet unmade. Have I even showered today? Hmmm....

It must be a funk of the moon--although I'm still not convinced against the conspiracy theory idea.

How is it that just one lost hour on Sunday morning has turned me into an ADHD reader and a poo-scooping vigilante against moles and digging dogs alike?

It must be the full moon. It's tonight. But I'm too tired to howl. maybe I'll go take a nap.

Wait... I already did that.

Coffee time! And nothing goes better with a cup of coffee than a little bit of fiction. Maybe my coffee break will be just long enough to finish No Fear... if not, I may just have to stay up late enough tonight to howl at that blasted moon.

No comments: