Today for the first time my mother sounded like an old woman on the phone. She isn’t actually old, having just turned 55 on Monday, but she’s sick, and sounded frail and weak and small, and the sound of her voice, usually so vibrant, but today, pathetic, is haunting me.

I find myself distracted by frightening thoughts of my mother someday living with us.

Some day in the far far far future, and only when we’ve run out of the necessary funds to keep her in a lounge chair on the beach with hardbodied young men bringing her margaritas every hour, as is her mostly-in-jest wish.

I’ve been musing on stories I want to write, but I can’t quite get them from my brain to my fingers.

I have an article I want to write, and I can’t focus enough to sit down and do it.

Last night, I stayed up til five, watching the lightening and counting the seconds until the thunder, as if the counting was a measure of my life.

Today, I’ve been in a sort of sleepy fog, flitting between tasks, but not settling to any of them.

My irises (brought home by Fuzzy on his last trip to the grocery store) are starting to curl, as if they know I’ve been reflecting upon mortality today.

The mums and carnations from valentines day remain smugly intact, their intense colors dragging me back from my more morbid thoughts.