I was asleep early, maybe around 7:00pm, after a long and draining day, when I woke up around 7:30pm. Unaware I had only slept a half hour I thought I had slept a full night, over 12 hours, and that I had better get going to not be late for work. I am allergic to being late, you see. So I scranbled, even texted my gf that I was surprised to have overslept, and to have apparently slept through a 6am alarm!

I don’t know how long it took to straighten out my disorientation but I pinned it down to what day of the week it was. It was still Wednesday. I don’t go to work again until Thursday. Relax. But before reaching that stage I had laid out my BP and anxiety meds for the day and even placed it next to the bath, where I usually ingest them. I got the coffee ready to go and may have done a few other things before realigning myself with the current date and time.

I ended up getting a whole lot of much-needed sleep, though there is a new poison in my nightly escape from being alive. The tablet computer on the piano has decided to turn itself on in the middle of the night, maybe 4am or so. THe lights are usually altoegether dark when I sleep alone, so any time this has happened I wake up certain there is an intruder making themselves comfortable by turning on the lights and smoking a cig on the couch.

What seems to be happening is the tablet PC, which I use almost exclusively as a sheet music reader, is also set up to check my email. When an email arrives the tablet makes a sound and the fucking screen lights up, which is really stupid. Over this particular night I got a blast of emails from the lab that did my blood work yesterday, so the screen kept lighting up, lighting up, lighting up.

I have managed to train my sleeping self to acknowledge what this nocturnal light show is about. It is nothing a pillow wrapped ’round my head cannot deflect fully.

The results from most of yesterday’s blood work are sitting in my inbox. 6 of 9 tests. I don’t really want to look at them. I don’t know how to read them and, I remembered just this very day, I no longer have an assigned PCP since my regular guy retired yesterday. YESTERDAY! Actually it was formally on Tuesday, April 30 that he retired, but effective for me becoming PCPless yesterday, May 1.

I had put off the blood work for longer than I realized, probably three years. Who knows what atrocities linger in my platelets, or wherever sickness lurks in the bloodstream. I expected to pass out, as happened when I last had blood drawn. But for whatever they drew 9 tubes that time. Yesterday it was only 3. I think the previous 9-tuber was when they thought I might have MS or some kind of brain imbalance, so the bloodletting drew more sauce than usual and was followed by a brain MRI which found nothing, not even a brain to work with.

Up next is another long-delayed procedure. But I’ll spare the details until it actually happens, since I’ve been known to postpone this one many times already.

Yesterday I learned there are 6 more authentic PRAY sightings, these on the upper west side.

I watched an old man eat a banana yesterday, asking myself if I am that man. Was I watching myself on the subway, scowling and making untethered eye contact with strangers, while angrily eating at a banana like it had caused this world hardship and irritation and deserved to be consumed and forgotten?

I also saw another older guy carrying off almost the complete collection of books from a Little Free Library in Astoria/Long Island City. He had taken so many that he was dropping them and stopping to pick them up. Whatever his intent, to actually read all those books or to resell them or I don’t know what else, he made quite a cutting profile. He is perfectly within the spirit of the Little Free Library (I guess?) in taking as many as he could carry. Or is he? I don’t need to know. He seemed earnest and determined in his pursuit. Am I that old man, too?