Fixated

What happens, when you mount a show, is that everything else fades into the background. Sleep habits change to suit demands. I fell asleep last night, in the middle of a thought. Literally. I had been writing, stopped to eat an omelet (blue cheese and onion chutney) and a piece of toast, rolled a smoke, and settled into my reading position at the end of the sofa where I have a floor lamp perfectly positioned. I never lit the cigaret. I was asleep almost instantly, woke with a start, about four in the morning, cleaned up the paragraph I was writing and shipped it off, that's why the odd time signature. It's a particular mind-set, opening a show. I've opened a lot of them, most of them very easy, 'soft' openings, as we refer to them, but some of them enormously complex, I go into what I've always thought of as a production mode, and it pretty much allows me to do what needs to be done, at the expense of anything else. As I get older, it can be taxing. The mental drain, of trying to get things correct, adequately installed, figuring out how to do a specific thing with the tools at my disposal. I can still do it, and do it well, but I no longer go out and court the ingenue after. I pretty much go home and crash. Living alone, my schedule is subject to a good bit of change, I come and go. It's not a bad state, but not having a significant other worries me sometimes. How long before they found my body? How long before they even looked? And what the fuck would it even matter, then? Another day installing. Charlotte and I set the balloons and arrows piece. I attached the balloons (they're heavy) with a large "J" hook which I cover with clear plastic tubing so that no metal contacts the glass. Plastic anchors, pan-head screws. The arrows have a screw welded to the wall end, and they literally screw into the wall. The whole thing looks very nice, and I compliment C on using it for the front wall. Hang the last pieces, set the last pedestals, and trundle off to the third floor to make the labels, a lot of labels; and I spend the rest of the day trimming labels to size. I don't finish, I have three more pages to trim out, and I used the paper cutter so much today that I feel like I might have damaged my right shoulder. My birthday, and it was on the calendar, so the bosses took me to lunch, and all the help at the pub offered a free beer after work, but it looked like rain and I went home. A 'rain check' for real. As it turned out I could have stayed in town for a couple of beers, the rain held off, but when it comes to the driveway, I err on the side of caution. My older daughter calls, and we chat about things, I burn a cream of broccoli soup while we're on the phone; but we laugh, and her boyfriend, Scott, makes a fresh tomato pie that I'm dying to try. I'm fixing to be knee-deep in tomatoes.