Sour kiwifruit

Last night I went to bed very early for me – ten o'clock – so that I would be well-rested for the early start I had today.

At eleven o'clock the phone rang. The Man rushed to get it, but it was too late. I was awake. I stared at my clock blearily, panicked, and leaped out of bed.

"IS IT REALLY ELEVEN O'CLOCK?" I screeched. Then I looked at the window, which was dark.

"... at NIGHT?" I tailed off, confused. "What was that?"

"Yes, it's eleven" said The Man as he came back into the room, slightly puzzled by my extreme reaction. "That was a fax."

I fell back into bed gratefully.

"Thank god for that," I said. "I thought it was eleven o'clock in the morning, and that I'd missed my first two classes, and that was the university calling to ask where I was, and I would get a really, really bad reputation, and ... "

It took a long time to fall asleep again. Paranoia is a hard thing to get rid of, especially first-day-of-classes paranoia. Today was my last first day. Nothing had gone terribly wrong yet, so I guess I was getting a bit nervous.

This morning The Man woke me at ten past six.

"I thought you set the alarm for six?" he said.

"I did!" I answered. I checked the clock, and gaped. The alarm was set to 'off'.

Then I remembered the previous night. "I guess I must have turned it off when the phone rang," I said. "That's always what I do when I get up."

"Aho," said The Man, and he was right. I was aho.

But the day went well after the unpromising beginning.

I must apologize to my regular readers for the dearth of postings about the new semester, which started last Thursday. I have been more than usually wiped out. But I will write about it soon.

In the meantime, allow me to blow you a kiss. I may as well. My mouth is still puckered up from eating a not-very-ripe kiwifruit after dinner tonight.