Saturday night, and you're still hangin' around...

... tired of living in your one-horse town
You'd like to find a little hole in the ground
For a while ...

Okay, technically, it's not Saturday night anymore. But, hey, if I haven't gone to bed yet, does it really count?

I finally felt well enough tonight to sit at my piano without getting a little queasy to my stomach. So I sat and played and played and sat, and every once in a while looked over my shoulder, but no one was there. So I played some Fleetwood, some Elton John and Billy Joel, a little Ben Folds ... even this Maria McKee song, which is hand-written on a stained and splotchy folded-up piece of paper on my music stand.

It felt good to play. Cleansing, like the getting-a-week's-worth-of-sadness-out kind of good. And when the piano was finished (because, as all musicians know, we are merely the tools by which the instrument communicates), my soul felt warm and nourished -- the way one does after warming up to a grilled-cheese sandwich and tomato soup in the middle of winter. And, of course, it made me wonder why I hadn't played my piano all week. I could have been having grilled-cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, but instead I was moping and loping from one moment to the next, subsisting on stale zwieback and flat Coke. What was my problem?

Next weekend, I am told, I will be hitting the open road with no particular agenda and no particular place to go. I have already pulled out and dusted off my travel companion, which has traveled more with me than some people do in their whole lifetime. I found a menu stuck in the back of the book from a St. Louis hole-in-the-wall. I became reminiscent. Lord knows after the past three weeks being in charge at work that I deserve a little R&R. I'm thinking of making it a 3-day weekend and heading west to Dallas. Or north to St. Louis (but that's so predictable for me). Or east to Atlanta. I'll pick a map and point.

Well, the sleeping pills are finally kicking in -- both diphen and dox tonight, because I was being indecisive -- so I think I'll go move Dear Hubby over to his side of the bed, crawl under the covers and get some shut-eye. And the iPod's going with me, because I've just added a few hundred more songs (3,188 is my current tally). Certainly there's something I want to listen to in there. Right? ... Anyway, peace and love, guys. Sleep well.