Ice Cream Has No Bones

So it's been nap time again. Strange how sleep picks odd times to visit now. And sometimes during the night it refuses to come near.

I guess I'm being paid back for my youthful years when I often banished sleep from my presence. I often spent nights awake. My first steady job was at a pizza restaurant. I started work at five-thirty at night and worked until close, which was midnight on Sunday, one o'clock in the morning Mondays through Thursdays, and two o'clock in the morning on Fridays and Saturdays. After work it could be two or three hours before I tried going to bed.

Later, in my college days, I again worked a pizza place, and this time I, certain waitresses and cooks, would gather at an all-night restaurant and talk until dawn.

When I wasn't working I was with Stephen, playing tennis until the lights went out on the courts at midnight or one. Then we would find a pizza place and get something to eat.

And when none of those things was going on I would read. Sometimes all night. Often all night.

So now I'm old. The local pizza places close around ten. Too expensive to stay open, and with internet, cable and movie rentals nobody sits down at a pizza place to eat anymore. Haven't the energy to work them anyway.

Can't play tennis anymore. Even if I could, Stephen is gone. I don't really enjoy it like I did. Neither do I enjoy the pizza hopping late at night without him.

Still read, though. Sometimes all night. Or, I write.

But even those nights when I manage to catch hold of sleep before midnight we tend to wrestle with each other more than relax and rest. And my legs hurt all the time, so I wake a lot.

I used to wonder why "old people" took naps in the day. Now I know. It's the best time to sleep. It's when sleep can most easily be captured and kept.

Well, I'm up now. We'll be eating a late supper. Spaghetti. Almost like the old days at J's Pizza. All I need now are Chris and Stephen. After we had placed our order we would get to talking and then I would say it; the phrase that always made Chris laugh.

Because, as you know, ice cream has no bones.