Insomnia Strikes North Scottsdale...

When I was young, I used to watch my poor father struggle through the endless night, suffering from insomnia. When I'd wake up I'd see him pass my bedroom door on one of his trips to the kitchen looking for something out of the fridge or a look out the front window to see if the paper had yet arrived. I felt sorry for him and never thought I'd suffer from the same malady. I'm pleased to say that I don't, but occasionally have that sleepless night like everyone else and Friday night was one of them. I went to bed about 1 AM and slept non-stop until 3 when for no apparent reason I awakened never to be able to go to sleep again. I laid in bed for about 2 hours when I finally threw in the towel and got up with the Dynamic Duo following close behind. First Zoie, then about 5 minutes later Bogie followed her. Zoie always goes straight to her spot on the sofa accepting what's going on, while Bogie always requires an explanation. He comes to me and looks up awaiting the situation report. I give it to him and he usually farts and finds a comfortable spot to lay down, usually the crate.

At 5 AM, I saw that Barry was online so I called to discuss the economy with him. He lives in Florida and is 2 hours ahead of us. Barry suffers from insomnia, so there was no explaining why I was up. He understood. When we hung up I took refuge on the sofa and was able to fall asleep for a couple of hours, after which I ascended the stairs to sleep 2 more hours in bed, while the Dynamic Duo followed suite.

At about noon, the "Lovely Jules" called to give me the construction report. She along with several young men from her crew at work volunteered to help build a house for a group not far from her own house. She reported she was tired and sore and I asked if she just wanted to stay home tonight and order out. She said no, she was hoping for a second wind. It really never came and when I arrived at her house right at 6 to see the Glendale Lights Festival, she seemed to still be tired, in spite of her bath that should have relaxed her.

We promptly headed on our way to see the event in downtown Glendale, a largely Hispanic community, but not before stopping to get the elusive lottery ticket at a local 7 Eleven. Because of the neighborhood, I insisted on going in with her. As we entered a man that was clearly drunk had his finger in the face of the middle-eastern clerks face, who was proudly wearing his Bluetooth ear piece and speaking to someone in a language that we couldn't understand, either Farsi or Arabic. The drunk exited, tripped, got up and continued his trip to oblivion. Jules bought her ticket and we left.

As we got closer to Glendale, the neighborhood worsened and pretty soon we were looking for a parking place where I was sure they'd vandalize the car, a parking place that never became available. The streets were mobbed and parking was never going to happen when Julie said, let's just go, we're never going to find a parking place within reasonable distance from where we were supposed to be. I was never more pleased! We headed North to look for a place to eat. Julie wasn't hungry and I was famished, as usual. After driving North on the same street that took us to the ghetto, things got better quickly and I talked Julie into going to Tutti Santi's for a quick dinner. When we finally arrived it was mobbed and people were everywhere. Like baby birds in a nest, everyone wanted the attention of the hostess/mother-bird. She was literally beside herself with chaos when Lao the owner walked up and waved and said hello. We asked if he could get us a table and he just kind of said no, with his Italian accent it sounded better than just NO in plain English, but never the less, it was still NO! Julie overheard the hostess saying that the walk-ins were waiting 45 minutes at that point and she's having a hard time even seating the people with reservations. That's when Julie gave me the elbow and said, let's go. We did. Directly across the street was another place that had been heavily advertised as being good and new and we tried there. As we got closer, we could see the door open and the mob inside and stopped dead in our tracks to head for the car. Julie said she knew of a place called North, that's good and never crowded. We went there and the hostess was telling the gentleman just ahead if us there was a 35 minute wait, that usually means close to an hour and we left again. This time we headed to an upscale grocery store where they sell cooked dinners and bought 2 bacon wrapped New York strips. along with all of the fixings and went back to Julie's to eat. By then I was literally starving. so was Pawpaw who got most of Julie's dinner. We settled in for a relaxing night of TV and I was home by 12. I slept until 9!