A Christmas Present For My Noggin

And other important news and updates

Yesterday I went to Wal-Mart. I’m not proud to say that but Wal-Mart is the only grocery store in this little podunk town in which I live. I’d rather not give what little money I have left to the richest family in the entire world but I was out of eggs, almost out of lemons and completely out of fresh organic parsley. What else was I supposed to do?

As everyone knows, Wal-Marts carry a lot more than just food — especially the big super Wal-Marts like the one in my backwater burg. But unlike so many of the shoppers there, I was not doing any Christmas shopping. I’ve already gotten gifts for the two GrandGirls. My Christmas shopping was almost completely done. I only intended to get the things on my budget-conscious shopping list and then get the hell out of there as quickly as I could.

(By the way, my shopping lists are hand-written on the back of a 3 by 5 index card. How low-tech is that?)

So there I was pushing my shopping cart through Wal-Freaking-Mart towards the grocery side of the store. Lo and behold, I suddenly and mysteriously found myself going down the bedding aisle. That’s right, the bedding aisle!

Looking back and forth at the shelves lining this aisle I realized that I had never been down this aisle before in the almost 8 years that I’ve been living in this hick-town on the prairie.

That’s when I remembered that I really, really needed a new pillow. I’ve been meaning to buy one for over a year. My current pillow was looking more and more like a pancake with each month. So I stopped and looked over all the pillows that Wally World had to offer.

Did you know that Wal-Mart sells a high-tech pillow for sixty bucks? Sixty freaking bucks! Did I go into a coma the last time I bought a pillow and not come out of that coma for a hundred years? I bought a car once for less than that. Sixty dollars?

And that is when the left half of my brain started talking to me, “White Feather, you stupid ignorant dolt! Remember your current employment situation and remember that you’re on a very strict budget. You can’t afford a 60 dollar pillow. You can’t even afford a 6 dollar pillow. What are you thinking?”

Don’t you just hate it when the left side of your brain yells at you like that?

But then, out of the blue, I hear something coming from the right side of my brain. But it wasn’t the right side of my brain talking. Instead, it was…

… Santa Claus!

And he said, “Now listen you dim-witted old man. You really need a new pillow and you deserve a new pillow. Go ahead and buy yourself a new pillow. And don’t listen to all the negativity in your noggin. Besides, if you buy yourself a new pillow then I don’t have to get you one. You know how hard it is getting a pillow down a chimney? And it only gets dirty in the process. And you don’t even have a chimney! Buy the damn pillow and I promise to get you something else.”

Who can argue with that?

I looked at every pillow they had to offer. I finally selected one. It was not the sixty dollar pillow and it sure as heck was not the six dollar pillow. The one I selected was in the upper echelon of pillow prices. It was more than I had ever paid for a pillow in my entire life!

So I put the pillow in my shopping cart then went to get my groceries then got the hell out of there. (Very sadly, they were out of fresh organic parsley.) This morning, after having slept on my new pillow, I woke up and my head and my neck and my shoulders felt so wonderfully fantastic. It was like I went to a chiropractor in my sleep!

So today I have found myself in a very rare and odd ‘Christmas Spirit.’ WTF?

In other important news the sun came out today. That may not sound like important news to you but it sure was important to me. For those of you who read my articles, Closure As the Fog Settles In, and Epiphanies Are Like Earthquakes, and other blabberings, you know that I’m an extremely solar person. I simply cannot go more than 48 hours with no sunshine without experiencing profound negative mental, physical and spiritual side effects. I simply MUST have sunshine!

Well, the sun finally came out today around 1:30 in the afternoon. The last time the sun came out was early Friday morning of last week! That was over 100 hours without sunshine and I survived! The men in white coats were outside my front door just waiting to whisk me away to the looney bin but I sent them away. I was okay. I survived. I made it!

When the sun came out I dropped everything (including my glass of drinking water). This delightful event could not be experienced through a glass window so I got dressed and went outside. I wanted to feel the sun on my skin. I wanted to breathe it in. I wanted to luxuriate in it. So I went for a walk.

I had not gone for a pleasure walk since last Thursday. I never go that long! It’s a daily thing for me. Oh, it was so splendid, so beautiful, so glorious! The temperature was quickly rising and the snow was finally melting and I was serenaded by the sound of dripping water. Talk about physical, mental and spiritual therapy! When I got home I thought to myself, “Oh, how sensational it is to be living in this beautiful, fantastic, delightful little town!”

Well, the sun has long set and this evening I find myself thinking about that darn pillow. After sleeping on it for just one night I feel thoroughly rejuvenated. I’ll be resting my weary noggin on that pillow for several hours every day from now on. How is that going to affect my noggin? How is that going to affect my life? And more importantly, how is that going to affect my writing?

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.

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