Singapore Adventure

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Pointlessly Rambling
by venitha

It's 5:30am, and I'm wide awake. I'm typing feverishly and sweating profusely. Whatever possessed me to eat two entire Lindt chocolate bars at 1:00 in the morning, I can't say. Can you hear that shrieking STRESS WUAH WUAH STRESS WUAH WUAH alarm, too? So, okay, that may have had something to do with it. Plus there was the horror of discovering that the chocolate bars were melting - mellllting! - a la the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz as they glimmered temptingly from the kitchen cupboard all week. Plus there was the overwhelming necessity of saving them from the adjectival newly-hatched kitchen ants. Plus there was the post-happy-birthday-D alcohol haze further impairing my normally-already-fairly-impaired judgment. Jim wisely, or, to be more honest, drunkenly, or, to be even more honest, exhaustedly, went straight to bed and now hours later snores obliviously as I type this.

Major Insomnia is a frequent STRESS WUAH WUAH and stratospheric-blood-sugar-level guest, but General Profuse Perspiration usually prefers to ambush me with a body slam in the gym downstairs. And, of course, he loves to tag along, a pesky younger sibling, on any and every outdoor excursion. This morning, my dampened state is the result of our newfound commitment to the environment: we've finally started turning off the air-con in the parts of the apartment we're not using. We've surely only lasted this long decadently and profligately cooled thanks to our bargain with the devil HP: I didn't see Jim on our tenth wedding anniversary, but I've never seen a Singapore electric bill. Of course, we don't now benefit financially from our temperance; instead we merely glow smugly with self-satisfaction. And sweat. Kindly allowing Jim his beauty sleep, I'm now in our dining room by day, sauna by night.

The bedroom, on the other hand, is our escape from this tropical paradise. I turn the air-con to 18, its lowest temperature setting, and Jim, the sneaky ratbag, increases the temperature while I brush my teeth. While he brushes his teeth, I calmly and quietly turn it back to 18, put it in powerful mode just for revenge, then spoon with him beneath a thin blanket, and fall asleep to dream about the crushing weight of a thick down comforter and ice cold feet to warm against his legs. And to have nightmares about sweat and insomnia and pointlessly rambling blog posts.

venitha