I wonder just how much more of this I can take.
Since I arrived back from Germany I’ve been house-minding out in the country, with only one of those things for company. You know, hairy things. Eat animals. Don’t talk much. Cats, that’s it. My language skills are slipping away here. When your only interlocutor doesn’t care whether you’re saying “You’re a kitty aren’t you yes you are!” or “Bacon bacon bacon bacon sandwich, going to make a sandwich of you now”, your language patterns become increasingly random.
Comfortable lemon.
Cats make peculiar companions, but they are warm and furry so it’s easy to forget this. Until you find yourself, out shopping, having to choose between something that comes in a clumping and a non-clumping form. Little good comes in a choice between clumping and non-clumping.
But lord knows how disconnected I would have gotten without having the cat to take care of. It needs to be feed regularly even if I don’t. I’m already living like one of those cognitive science lab experiments. The weather has been pretty crap but it’s not at all cold, so on days when I don’t leave the house I entirely eschew clothing. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it feels great. As long as I don’t pass a mirror. This isn’t nudism any more than walking around with nothing on under your clothes is. (Though I do like to refer to that practice as “cryptonudism”.) Effectively I am wearing a house. I like it, it’s very roomy in the crotch. And everywhere else.
My sleeping too has grown unconventional, drifting from the usual eight hours at a time to two separate “watches” of four hours, leading me to suspect that this is actually more natural. At least, for abnormal people. What I mean is, it’s quite natural for a significant proportion of the population to pass the night… differently. Would it not make sense, for humans or human ancestors sleeping in vulnerable groups, to have an innate variation in their sleeping patterns so that they’re never all asleep at once?
So if you ever ask again what I’m doing awake in the middle of the night, I’ll be forced to tell the truth. I’m protecting you, you ungrateful bastard. From leopards.
4 replies on “Diary Of A Slightly-Madman”
It is out of situations like this one that 500 page contracts evolve. Thanks to you house-sitting agreements will now need a no-house-as-garment clause. More and more conditions will have to be added to what once was a simple, common sense favour. Soon you won’t be able to house sit without a lengthy negotiation process.
So yes, madman you are.
I hasten to point out that this is my own home I’m wearing – the family home, which it falls to me to mind while my mother holidays. I would not make so free with your homes should you lend them to me, I promise. Besides, they probably wouldn’t fit.
There’s actually data that suggest that your pattern of sleep was pretty common before electric lights found their way into society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep
Interesting. I think that it’s probably true, though in my view it’s one element in a more complex pattern that helps make sure someone is always awake.
Just to be awkward last night – or rather, this mid-to-late morning – I slept precisely six hours. At the moment it seems no matter what time I go to sleep I will, whether briefly or for good, open my eyes at 1:30 pm.