I went searching for the lyrics to the song I had stuck in my head, which I do almost every single night, to be sure that I have the title and artist listed correctly, and less often to make sure the song says what I actually want it to. (Sometimes that matters to me, sometimes not so much.) I found myself helplessly wandering on tangents, watching YouTube videos of Peaches and Herb singing Reunited on the Midnight Special. It's bedtime, when I always write these little essays, and I'm in a dark room in bed. It took nothing to trigger a really strong flashback to middle school, staying up late on weekends, watching the Midnight Special on the tiny little TV my dad gave me for Christmas when I was a kid. The TV was a smooth, "modern" design (to the late 70s and early 80s), in a creamy white molded plastic, and the screen on it couldn't have been much bigger than the screen on the iPad I was using to look up song lyrics and videos. Those late, late nights, watching that tiny TV set on the dresser at the foot of my bed were not the origin of my obsession with music, but they fed into it at a very influential time in my development. I can't imagine where I would have been had I not thrived on a steady diet of musical performance on the Midnight Special and Saturday Night Live, and when it came along, the original MTV, from back in my teenage years when that actually stood for "music television."
When I went searching for a song, I thought I was going to focus on writing about the little storm pushing through right now, and the bigger one promised for late in the weekend. ("Promise" is a strong term this far out, but I'm sticking with it for now.) I had almost forgotten the weather was to take a turn, when I went outside right around noon. I'd been cleaning house for hours, and every bit of me hurt. I went out the soak the aches loose, and as soon as I sat in the hot tub, I looked north, over T's side of the fence, and saw dark skies looming. It was still a little sunny when I sat down, but within twenty minutes, I had to keep checking my phone to remind myself it wasn't evening, it was lunchtime. The sky was dark, the shadows were coming sideways (from the south, but it still played tricks on my mind), and winds kicked up and blew leaves into the water around me over and over. Just telling Murray to go in out of the rain doesn't work, so he got sprinkled on a little when the front arrived, but he does not seem to care, ever. By late night, once the Wednesday game crew left, and we were running the dogs out for a last chance to pee and taking trash to the cans in the alley, the rain had turned to light snow. It's supposed to be a fast-moving storm, without much accumulation this far north (much heaver snow down by Castle Rock and Colorado Springs), so there isn't much reason to get excited yet. Sunday and Monday could feed my childish enthusiasm for deep snow a bit better. My inner child has been crying out in anguish for a "snowpocalypse" for years. These two rounds of frozen precipitation won't be it, but they make me ready all over again for a literal deep freeze.
It's a quarter to midnight as I'm concluding writing. There are three cats pushing me to the far edge and corner of the bed, as usual. I failed to verify my sheets got dry while I was madly panic-cleaning the house for the Wednesday game night, so after everyone left, I had to carry a wadded-up, still-damp ball of sheets to the bedroom. We've been just on top of the fitted sheet for an hour, waiting for it to air dry, before making the bed the rest of the way. Time to toss the cats aside and put everything together properly. If I'm lucky, I can get it done and be sound asleep by midnight. I am not holding my breath, though.
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