The Soothing Sounds of Phoenix in the Evening

To try to survive the piercing trauma of my 5:00 a.m. alarm, I hit the hay last night at 10:30. I was scrunched up in my brain, in that place where I ricochet back and forth from trying to remember what I forgot to buy at Target, to memories of puking up corn on my suede boots when I was 7. I could not relax. It was time to take something very mild to help me sleep. You don't want no big mean-ass sleeping pill when you have only 6 hours to sleep it off. I opted for a Tylenol PM.

A gulp of juice and pill later, I was back in bed. Relax. Reeeelaaaaaax. Hold reeeeeeealllly still. (The same words spoken to me in the wee hours on prom night.)

Almost asleep.

Then, the giant angry nuclear powered mosquito from the banks of the lava-filled rivers of hell, which is also known as the police helicopter, comes zooming over the house, close enough to the roof to suck shingles up into the blades. My spinal cord melts from my body, soaks into the mattress, and my brain catches fire like a crackly page from On the Road in an opium den. I try to calm down. The helicopter will be gone soon, I tell myself. Soon enough to let me have my 6 hours of luscious sleep. Five full minutes pass. The helicopter is still growling over the roof, swooping to and fro, and making my blood pressure shoot up like one of those things at the carnival, the tall thing that you hit with a sledgehammer to make the bell ring at the top.

I get up on the bed, push aside the curtain and crack open the blinds and I see the helicopter's razor-sharp searchlight making rapid sweeps over a 2-block circle of Phoenix. A circle I just happen to be in the middle of, along with, perhaps, a "Cops" regular fleeing the scene in baggy culotte-like denim shorts and untied high-tops and no shirt. The perfect garb for appearing on camera, face down in the dirt while being handcuffed and yelling "I dint do nothin', man! Sh*t man, what the f*ck you gotta be puttin' the bracelets on for?"

As my rheumy, drugged eyeballs try to follow the searchlight like a dog concentrating on the owner's Milkbone-grasping hand, I say to Scott "Who the HELL could sleep through this?" Apparently he can.
But if Candy can't sleep, nobody does. So I rouse the cat, too, hold him to the window, stick his perplexed face through the blinds. "See? See the big light out there, Hankie?"

This cat needs his sleep more than I do. He will be 20 years old in March, and unless he gets his crucial 23 and a half hours a day of sleep, that waking half hour is murder on him mommy and daddy. And yes, I did write "him" mommy and daddy. It happens to be baby talk, which I indulge in many times a day with Hankie. "Oh look, him is eating chickie from him widdle bowl." By the time Scott stops puking at such a velocity that there are new indentations on the drywall, I have shifted to "Him is a good kitty," and praising him for finishing the carefully selected bites of chicken breast I had artfully arranged on him widdle dish.

The helicopter finally gives up its search, probably because the culprit has hidden in our tiny pool bathroom and is doing despicable things to our styrofoam swim noodles. Tomorrow I will pose him next to a quarter, and he will go the way of Lizzie.