Because I don't want to risk running out. It's the only thing that seems to work on the little red itchy bumps I get from time to time on my feet or ankles. I thank God for Benadryl cream because if I hit the bumps hard and fast with it they fade over the course of about an hour. If I don't, or if I give in to the desire to scratch, they get worse and spread and are very hard to get rid of.

I won't inflict you with a description of what happens if they get infected.

On a less medicinal topic, I am still trying to finish Cherry. I'm getting a bit bogged down in her descriptions of her prodigious recreational drug use in the 70's. I guess that's not really a less medicinal topic, is it? But at least she is honest about the havoc it created among her friends. Ruined lives. Lost lives. And not really that much fun when it came right down to it.

but I'm almost through reading Cherry. It seemed from her references in the book that she's about my age so I looked her up. Turns out there's a Wikipedia article on her. She converted to Roman Catholicism as an adult. I'm always interested in adult converts to Christianity, because I am one. She has a volume of sacred verse called "Sinners Welcome" which I expect will appear on the night table soon.

When it gets cold and rainy and dark in the middle of October, it's tempting to take your spaghetti into the bedroom and set the dish on the coaster on the night table and read while you eat. That's ok in moderation, of course, but one must try to resist the urge to eat all one's meals using the nightstand as a table. And the urge to spend most of one's time under the comforter, as the cat gets to do if she wants. One must be resolute and keep up the exercising and the moderation of diet and the activities of daily living. You mustn't wish too hard for a snow storm that shuts down the whole city. Because those can cause widespread inconvenience if not actual suffering. Staying away from the bedroom as much as possible during the day is probably best.

I don't have the kind of insomnia that is truly worth complaining about. I don't toss and turn for hours while sleep remains out of reach. I don't wake up at 2 and find it impossible to get back to sleep. I just wake up every couple of hours or so. For a few minutes. When I do I always look at my night stand, because the digital clock is there and I must know how much of the night is left and how long it has been since I last awoke. Sometimes 4 or 5 hours will have passed and that is a good night.

The insomnia rarely gets so bad that I have to get up and eat cereal or read or pace the house or talk to the cats.

When I was a child I often walked in my sleep. I remember once waking up in the living room and my mother was asking me if I was ok and didn't I want to go back to bed? Another time she told me that I had walked into her room and said I was looking for a little puzzle piece. I don't remember that at all. She told me shortly before she died that my sleep walking had been scary for her. I had never known that. It had always been presented to me as a sort of quirky funny thing. I'm pretty sure I don't walk in my sleep anymore, except that once years ago I found a chair moved from one room to another in the morning. I was the only one who could have done that, and I didn't remember doing it.

Jubilate has asked for a night table inventory update, especially as regards books. One book has gone. I finished reading Blue Shoes and Happiness and returned it to the library. It was, of course, charming as all his books are. And not just charming and fun and funny but good for the spirit also. Not many books make you want to know the characters and live in their world, but this is one that does. Another is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, but it's not currently on the night stand.

The book I am reading now is Cherry by Mary Karr. What a skillful writer she is! It's a memoir but reads like a slightly surreal novel. She notices things about people - little things that make them human and make you care about them.

Still on the stack are The Phantom Tollbooth and the Robt. E. Lee biography. The Phantom Tollbooth is a children's book that many people - not only children- have apparently loved but so far I can't really get with it. It's the kind of fantasy that doesn't ring true as far as human emotion goes. I can put up with or even enjoy all manner of outer space angels and time travel and unicorns if they are authentically emotional. For instance, A Wrinkle in Time. It has interplanetary travel by thought and centaurs with wings of rainbow and witches who used to be stars. It works, because they are all dealing with things like love and loss and right and wrong in a human way. So far, The Phantom Tollbooth seems robotic. But I will give it another chance before I abandon it.

Not sure yet about Robt. E. Lee.