The Night Before

I am trying to breathe. As of late, I have upped my 8 minutes of meditation to 10, and the time flies by. As usual, tons of thoughts run in and out of my head, and when I realize that I am getting caught up in them, I release the current thought and settle back into the sounds of the first birds waking up and chattering their good morning twitters, the whistle of the train as it blows its horn throughout the city, the cars rumbling down the street, the high whine of the trucks traveling up and down the Thruway a few miles away. On occasion there is a siren, or THE dog barking right under the window, but the sounds are like a symphony to me, and I find them soothing and I stay centered in their harmony. I also listen to my breath, and with each exhale I let my conscience travel beyond my body, beyond the pale green walls of my meditation room, out into the yard, the city, the woods, and into the mountains and the sky.

But today's meditation calm has worn off. I am trying to figure out the legal talk of the sales tax forms, wondering if I have been doing them wrong all along. They are due tomorrow, and I am hoping that after I recover from the drugs of the endoscopy, that I will be able to call my accountant to clarify some questions, make out a check and be OK to drive uptown to post the payment.

The papers states that I cannot drive for 24 hours, and that I cannot drink alcohol for 24 hours. Yet when I read the bottles of the medicines I take on a daily basis, all of them had warnings on them about driving while taking them. EEKS. My blood pressure meds, my progesterone? I drive on them all the time? Then again, I am the women who woke up twice during surgery, and the woman whom the ER could not sedate no matter how much morphine they gave her.

Well, off to get my one last glass of water before the fasting deadline. It's funny when you know you can't have something, that you crave it even more. It will be a rough morning without coffee OR water in the morning, and a rougher time when the doctors won't be able to find a single vein in my body to put the sleep juice in. They had better be good, or they are in for trouble.

Patti O Faster