Talk Thursday: Respect in the Morning

Hi all! We're introducing a new feature here at Buddhist in the Bible Belt for our legion of screaming fans. It's called Talk Thursday. Y'all might recall my four days in New Orleans and the much weirdness that ensued. Well, part of it was meeting some really cool people. Among them, JulieAnne and Kent. They're from Utah, my former haint (and for lots of reasons it's best that I'm not living there anymore), and they introduced me. So blame them.

Talk Thursday is a round robin of blogging. A topic gets introduced sometime between Sunday and Thursday. By Thursday, you're supposed to have your post up, so I'm kind of pushing it here. Luckily there are few rules. Just write something, check out what everybody else is writing and enjoy! Them's good rules.

So this week's topic is respect in the morning. I'm not sure what one is supposed to respect in the morning, but as somebody who's been hauling her sorry self out of bed at about 4:30 to Get the Fucking Revision Done for a month, I have no respect for mornings. They're cold and unpleasant and dark and even the CATS don't want to be up at that hour. Normally you get up, cat follows you into the kitchen, expecting to be fed. Nope, not these three. They crack a sleepy eyelid, yawn (I think they're really saying "Turn the light off, you crazy hooman," but we'll call it a yawn anyway) and go right back to what they were doing, which is to say, sleeping. Would that I were so lucky.

Ah, but here's a question. Do mornings have respect for me? They do, after all, show up with predictable constancy, right around the same time every day. So they are at least reliable. I can count on them not to abandon me after a night of wild partying, which at my age consists of maybe reading a few pages of Thich Nhat Hanh's "Happiness" before I pass out from exhaustion. Further, it's very quiet in the morning around our place. The a/c doesn't start chilling everything out until about six, Joan is still asleep, and frankly it's rather pleasant. If it just took place later in the day, I could get used to the idea. Maybe. Possibly.

The subtopic this week (sometimes there are subtopics) is Odds and Ends. So here's a bunch of stuff about which I will simply lose sleep if I don't tell you:

• I'm at Afrah, the world's greatest Middle Eastern restaurant, eating a kafta sandwich that is just to die for.
• I've read three quarters of The Girl Who Played With Fire and it's not as good as Dragon Tattoo but it's still pretty good. The Swedish film is playing at the Angelika and I might go this weekend (since too much Swedish ultraviolence is never enough).
• I started taking a new and exciting med this week. Much to my annoyance, it seems to be working. The anxiety level is definitely down and I seem to be more sociable.
• Because, honestly, as it is I almost rattle when I walk.
• I ordered some slacks from Lane Bryant and they're a bit snug but I'm keeping them anyway. Hope springs eternal and all that.
• I'm gonna have leftover pita bread and baba ganouj. Love that.
• There's a certain weirdness to going to dinner at Afrah right before an OA meeting. But hey, we all gotta eat.

Okay, that's going to have to wrap it up for now. Here are the other Talk Thursday blogs. I strongly encourage you to go check em out. Tell em Jen sent you:

Calista - http://ohjoyitsme.blogspot.com/

JulieAnn - http://www.ravingsii.blogspot.com/

Kent - http://mormonroth.blogspot.com

Krista - http://psamsrants.blogspot.com/

Colleen - http://spudlostinutah.blogspot.com/

Jeniphur - http://firstpositionparallel.wordpress.com/

Lyn - http://lynnblossom.wordpress.com/

Tandy - http://sandratfowler.blogspot.com/

Rodger - http://luciddreamerblog.blogspot.com/

Eddie - http://shinshige.wordpress.com/