Pacific Northwest Confluence

Well, here I am…wide awake at a quarter past midnight. The joys of fluctuating hormones have completely screwed up my sleep patterns. When I finally DO crawl into bed, I wake up every 90 minutes or so awash in the perspiration of a virulent hot flash. My most restful sleep usually comes after my 4:00 am hot flash, which sometimes lasts until 6:00 am… I cover my head with a pillow to block out that pesky solstice plus a week early morning sun, and finally stop sweating long enough to drift off. Then, suddenly I jerk myself awake, struggle to see the clock, and see that it is nearing 9:00 am. I stumble out of bed, still groggy, feeling like I have slept half the day away.

It’s times like these that I’m grateful that I’m "semi-retired." I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to haul myself out of bed at 6 am to get ready for work after four hours or less of actual sleep, night after night.

On this particular night, I really SHOULD be dragging my butt to bed, because I actually have to set the alarm for a relatively early rising in the morning. I must be showered, dressed, and out of the house by 8:00 Friday morning…so that I can point my car in a northerly direction toward Olympia, WA. Where I have scheduled my THIRD face-to-face meeting with an AOL journal friend. I have previously met Marcy (punky5678) and Lisa (cw2smom). Tomorrow, I am slated to meet the much younger and much more successful (than me) Robbie (krobbie67)—that life-in-the-fast-lane denizen of the City of Angels, who has escaped northward for a little R & R. She is vacationing in Seattle, and I live in far northern Oregon, so we thought surely there must be a halfway point at which we could meet. We spun the dial, drew the maps, and decided upon Olympia.

Now, the only thing I know about Olympia is that it is the capitol of Washington, and that for 8 years, I drove through it about once a month on my way from Oregon to Seattle for managers’ meetings for the company I worked for. Robbie did some research, and found that Olympia holds a big-time farmers’ market during the summer months; which, coincidentally, is also having a jazz festival tomorrow. What could be more fun?

I’m looking forward to a couple hours of fresh northwest produce, crafts, jazz…and, most importantly, Robbie. Of course, I’ll have my camera…so I promise pictures of this "mini-confluence." ¡Hasta luego!