They say when you can’t sleep it feels like the longest night of the year. That of course is nonsense, because tonight is the hibernal solstice, and I haven’t slept a full night since the raccoon came to town.
It’s my landlady’s fault. RoseMarie refuses to put catches on the top of our trash barrels. Naturally it’s became a target for the two legged wildlife of Eugene, and more recently the four-legged kind. This is her idea of karmic revenge – Grandma never listened to her when she begged her to get a Life Alert. Now RoseMarie refuses to listen to me. Some sort of weird, preternatural middle-aged Circle of Life where she asserts dominance by ignoring ideas no matter how good they sound.
“The raccoons have struck again! Get out there with the rake while I get the snow shovel.” It happens at least twice a week, I wouldn’t mind so much but the raccoons can never decide on which nights to strike. Five nights out of seven, I binge YouTube with white-knuckles, waiting for the sound of little claws across the fence. My kingdom for a wrist rocket.
RoseMarie tortures other people besides me. She has a nephew – nice guy, nice family. Calls him up on a random Sunday morning and demands that he dig up a friend with a truck, driving across town to pick up a free couch on Craigslist. Then they take the couch back across town, sprain their backs getting it into Rose Marie’s living room. No money for gas. Her only gesture of compensation is a free glass of room-temperature tap water. Then she has the nerve to act surprised when her family refuses to take her calls. For me, the lack of a functioning vehicle is a blessing in disguise.
For centuries, society benefited from the illusion that we were not, in fact, a wild tapestry of sociopathic symbiosis. The signs we are sinking deeper into dystopian ruin increase with every passing day. I still believe that a good life is possible, but not while RoseMarie loses a guerrilla war to marauding trash pandas. They’re efficiency at navigating her discarded plastic bottles of Mexican vodka for the moldy Entenmanns’ poundcake and gold foil Almond Roca wrappers is nothing short of remarkable. So far, the opposing sides have been unable to negotiate a ceasefire.
The night is well along, and the day draws near. I have no such hope. Last night I dreamt the entire plot to a Batman – the Animated Series movie that doesn’t exist. Part of it was significant in that everyone finally saw Batman’s face, but nobody seemed to care. Yeah, sure, Bruce Wayne. So what? I’m not sure what to make of that – so perhaps it’ll end up in another installment of the Superhero Shrink.
Time to get the day started – more emails to send to lit agents for Mike.Sierra.Echo. May your racoons skip the block tonight, and may your hibernal solstice result in sweet dreams.
