This represents my second go-round of waking up. Around 3:00 AM , I woke up, looked at my e-mail feed on the smartphone, and decided to be up for awhile. I took off my flannel pyjamas with the Black Watch tartan print,  put on  underwear, including a cotton-ribbed athletic shirt, AKA “Wife-beater”, jeans and my go-to denim chambray button down.  I was committed to being up. I read some of the paper, made a cup of decaf in the K-cup machine, did some desultory channel surfing. I just couldn’t focus in on the TV preacher, Mike Murdoch and his $58 pledge, or the infomercial for something, or watching Sea Hunt for the gazillionth  time.

Around 4:30 AM, I decided getting up and staying up was a bad idea. I went back to bed, in the big bed, Mrs CorC?’s bed,  and did get two and half hours more sleep.  After making a pot of coffee with the wonder ingredient caffeine, I realize I was back to the same conundrum I faced at three.What do I do with this day that God gave me?

More than anything else, I wanted to put some words up into cyberspace.  I consider the readers of my blog my friends. This glorious anonymity of the blogosphere fosters intimacy, not unlike the safe space of an AA meeting. Here I can share the paradoxes of my life: my faith and my strong sexuality, knowing they are both God-given and therefore not irreconcilable.  I long ago gave up being respectable, in the Sinclair Lewis Main Street sense of the word. (Having hillbilly relatives that made moonshine greatly facilitated abandoning that dubious aspiration.)

In the real world, there is vacuuming to be done. And floor mopping. I can make some very nice chicken salad with the chicken breasts I defrosted.  I can work on my stretching, take my stepmother to the Y, and go swimming while I’m there.

There’s a whole world out there. Let me get going.

Later, comrades!