Nearly three in the morning, on the front porch, ceiling fan whirring, lights low. I had the lights off before but I heard rustling outside, a cat or raccoon or something, so I thought I would alert the creature of my presence lest I scared the shit out of him/her by getting up to move.

Why am I awake, you ask? Hold on, I’m getting to that. Patience. Yesterday T, S and I hit Best Buy and Borders in the morning. T passed on an mp3 player, smart move as he doesn’t listen to music much, and decided to hold off on spending his birthday cash. I didn’t have his self-control when I was his age. While driving home I felt somewhat spacey and decided I probably shouldn’t drive while under the influence of Tylenol and codeine. I spent most of the afternoon channel surfing baseball, finishing the excellent “Oscar Wao” and bitching about my testicles. Finally I stopped wearing the sling the doctor gave me because the device, in my opinion, hurt. I thought moving around would be ill-advised at that point so I settled into the couch or front porch chair until dinner. As Sunday was T’s birthday I didn’t want to blow him off completely so we talked a lot although I couldn’t play baseball or anything. We did the cake thing, etc. We had planned on hitting the Rams’ practice but I was in condition so M decided to take the boys to the pool instead. I downed some melatonin and after reading some of the Dalai Lama’s book on anger I crashed deep by 7 or so. M and the boys returned home sooner or later but I slept through their return. So that’s why I’m up early. And that’s why I should probably try to get back to sleep now. Good morning.