XVI. Sometimes naps are just too much work

I have romantic notions of the afternoon nap. Maybe it originates from childhood summers, when the days were long, hot and aimless.

Maybe it is from my young adulthood when afternoon naps might include an exhausted nude woman at my side. (Fiction)Nevertheless, the scene intoxicates me: the orange of the descending sun, the gentle song of the fence-top mockingbird, the cyclical whir of the cicadas.

As you get older, your opportunity for the afternoon nap diminishes. You always have something more productive to do, like run errands or stalk enemies.

A few days ago, I'm home and exhausted in the early afternoon. I had gotten all my stalking done and I begin to think, "I am going to treat myself to a little afternoon nap. Just like when I was kid."I'm not even going to my bed. I am going to sleep right here on this couch," I say.

In order to lay my 5-8 body flat on the ever-so-puzzling "love seat," I cock my head at a right angle beneath the armrest. My breathing stops and my vertebrae weep fluid. So I straighten my neck and prop my feet up on the far armrest. The lack of circulation turns my feet into hams, but I don't care.

It is at this time I realize that a woman's primary non-reproductive function is to turn any item in the world into something less functional and more decorative.

I discover our couch pillows are unusable as pillows. My cheek finds resistance on a hardcore cylinder wrapped in 80-grit sandpaper. The blanket is of such dimension it would fail a pygmy. However, I am caught in that decision-making equilibrium, too tired to get up for proper supplies, but unable to relax without them.

Then, right as I am thinking, "I wish those freaking cicadas would shut up," my dog nearly kills me. In the twilight of sleep, there is nothing more shocking than the indoor dog bark. I bolt upright and watch the mailman walk away as a mockingbird dive-bombs his head. Then I lay back down and follow my slowing heartbeat.

Finally, I drift, but my stalking dream is interrupted by two incredibly sharp pains in my chest, like stiletto heels digging in.

I slowly open my eyes and I am nose-to-nose with my staring, judgmental cat. I glance down his body. He is wearing stiletto heels. I knock him off me as my cellphone rings. I triangulate the Looney Tunes theme and scramble across the room."Hello?"

"Oh, never mind. I found it." She hangs up.

I close the phone and watch my cat tear through the house in heels chasing a ping pong ball. We have never owned a ping pong ball.Finally, I get up and decide to go dig ditches. Less work.