… is like sleeping in a fully-functioning coffee bar, blenders, bean grinders, steamers and all. Just when you think the blending is done, there comes a brief pause, then the steamer goes off. Pause. Some relief… nope, more bean grinding. So forth and so on.

Still in Minnesota. I’m wearing long-sleeves in mid-July and loving the fact. As many of you may know, I enjoy wearing my Mr. Rogers zip-up sweater jackets whenever I can, especially so during the summer months in a climate other than the southern one I’m familiar with where it is typically impractical to don such garments in the unbearable heat and humidity of the southeastern USA. I know the return to Nashville in a couple of weeks will be a face-slapping reintroduction to a grotesque sweltering sauna. But the thought of returning home to normalcy looms somewhat bright and appealing in my mind. It’s the littlest things like eating what I want, when I want, and mowing the lawn.

We had to move Ellis out of his room into ours for 10 days in order to accommodate a visitor needing that space, the one adjacent to ours. Last night was Ellis’ third night with us and I can imagine few worse nighttime sleeping scenarios. We typically crawl into bed here near about midnight, long after Ellis is asleep.

Sidebar: for the life of me, I still don’t understand how or why parents refer to the bedtime process as “putting him/her down”. The word “down” in such phrasing sounds too much like a ghoulish euphemism for euthanasia. Eupeptic Europe eats its own euros while eulogizing the Eustachian tube.

And every night thus far, as we have ever so delicately tried crawling into bed, he has awoken and subsequently cried for an hour, or the better part of one. I watched the red digits of the clock rust away last night with two pillows muffling my ears as Ellis, on the other side of the headboard not three feet from our very scalps, groaned and yawped his way back to stillness. I found myself amazed at some of the unfriendly thoughts and words that raced through my frustrated mind as I lay there fuming. People in other countries live like this each and every day and in much tighter spaces than our current digs, and it makes me wish I weren’t so Americanized, so fiercely independent. I have much to learn in the way of patience, tolerance and a slew of other fruits of the spirit. Reminds me just how ugly I can be and how graceful God is despite me, his own little surly malcontent.

Sleep well, ye well-rested souls. This too shall pass.