Drinking before noon is sadly underrated

Most of the time the hardest part of writing is writing. If I could capture the thoughts, dialogue and sharp repartee’ that come almost unbidden in the middle of the night, you’d all no doubt know my name well. At times I’ve jumped out of bed and begun scribbling furiously, but I guess genius is fleeting. Two perfect sentences just fall short of a Pulitzer winner. That’s all that I seem to be able to remember. For a long while I took a pad and pen to bed with me, and carefully placed them next to the bedside lamp. Same result. I finally came to believe that something in the incandescent light bulb sucks all the brain waves out of my head. Come to think about it, I need to follow up on that idea. I seem to do a lot better in the light of day.
At any rate, until I can somehow capture my thoughts and words while sleeping, I appear to be doomed to rising at 4-something and clicking the keys for a while. I’m not necessarily more lucid, or coherent, but at least while close to upright I can translate from cranium to screen in a somewhat consistent manner. And besides, it gets me up and going at my favorite time of day. Ernest Hemingway I’m not, but I’d bet you could find him drinking coffee and scrawling at dawn when he was “on” (correct me if you know that he was a slug-a-bed, and didn’t get up until late. On second thought, please don’t correct me. I like that mental image, right or wrong).
It was a great weekend at the Lindsey hacienda. We got to do the kind of stuff all 30-year-old men should fill their time with. Of course, the last time I was 30-something was almost 30-something years ago, so I sort of rolled off the side of the bed and cranked myself upright (albeit stooped over) this morning, and tottered into the kitchen to brew some very strong coffee. It was tempting to splash a little something extra into the cup, but like a good temperance union man I resisted. One of these days I’m going to give in to it, and test a pet theory of mine. For a long time I’ve believed that drinking strong spirits before noon is sadly underrated. My friend Joe agrees with me, and he’s even tried it a time or two. He has this killer homemade wine, and reports that it helps your bones get the right amount of lubrication in the morning. There are very few things that I will argue with Joe about, and this is not one of them. When I’m his age I’ll just be glad to be his age. Anything else will be gravy (not groovy, gravy. I might be from that generation, but I was more into food than flowers then). I don’t know anyone who works as hard and as long as he. I can’t begin to keep up with him. Of course, all that does is strengthen my theory, and make me want to test it sooner, and over an extended period. Any good researcher knows that the primary conclusion of all longitudinal studies is that more study is required. I’m liking where this is going more and more all the time. If I get less coherent than usual in the next paragraph (my detractors are wondering right now how they’ll know), it just may be that I’ve begun my grand experiment. No, another day. It’s already too late for today. It’s nearly time to head out the door for the pigpen. Tomorrow for sure!