1237

i have this weird-ism about myself and the number 1237. i developed it in high school when i went to my first (and only!) traditional high school "party." i use the quotations because i was way too much of a goody-goody to actually drink or anything else that went on there that night.

i think the house number might have been 1237....? Or it ended at 12:37....? i don't actually remember now. But i got it in my head that night that that number was portentous. Since then i have seen it everywhere. If i wake up in the middle of the night? It is garaunteed to be 12:37am. If i randomly glance at a clock in the afternoon... 12:37. It's the filing code on my Netflix movie, or the expiration time on a McDonald's cherry pie. Maybe it's no more common than any other number and i have just convinced myself for the last fifteen years that it's everywhere. Or maybe, just maybe... it'll be the day i die (1/2/37) or the address of my first home. Or the price of my next car! Or the time of my first [second] child's birth.

Who knows. i'm probably nuts.

It showed up again on Friday night. We dismissed early from school on Friday due to the blizzard (if any of you have been watching the Weather Channel lately) and i gleefully went home to a long weekend stuck inside with the excuse of not going anywhere. i would play with the cat, watch Red Dwarf, and eat Lean Cuisines (no cooking!). But on Friday night at exactly 12:37, as i was snuggling up in bed with a book and the pelting sleet drumming against the window, i heard a little beep in the hallway. It sounded like the smoke alarm, so i went to peek my head out the door and found a waterfall in the ceiling of my apartment building. It wasn't leaking into my unit, so i called the emergency maintenence and went back to bed. A little after 3, i woke up to the alarm blaring continually. i guess water had gotten into it or something. So i called again, and stayed awake. Who could sleep? Sao climbed up onto my shoulder as she always does the instant i sit on the couch, and we listened to the sleet and watched NBC, the only channel i could get on my new television.

By 8am, the alarm seemed to be slowing down in both tempo and pitch, and finally it went off. Ah, blissful silence. So i wandered back to bed and snuggled back in. Sao jumped up and joined me. We were two peas in a pod. Ten minutes later, the cable guy calls. Sleet has turned to snow and we now have 5 inches on the ground with blizzard conditions and new snowfall of about 2 inches/hour. i can't get the apartment maintenence men to come fix a celing that's leaking in no fewer than five places, including a light fixture. But the cable guy? He's there two hours early and raring to hook me up!

Now, i have never paid for cable in my life. But when my old TV broke and i had to buy a flatscreen, i could no longer get my broadcast channels via rabbit ears. So i broke down and asked for the most basic package, channels 2-22 which essentially covers the broadcast channels plus the Weather Channel (nice to have in Kansas, though i am discovering that the local guys do a much better job in a tornado situation) a few local public access channels, and two CSPANs! Seriously? Of all the cable channels i would have chosen, CSPAN would not have been one of them. Let alone two of them. CNN, sure. Discovery! Animal Planet. Nick at Night. Anything. Just not CSPAN. But i get two of them!

So the cable guy comes and goes, and i check out CBS, which i've never gotten here. Yes! It comes in. i can watch Big Bang without having to get a tape from our secretary. Now i can go back to bed in peace. It's 11am and great afternoon sleeping weather. So i crawled back into bed. i kid you not, folks... i kid you not... the moment i pulled the covers up to my face and got that happy little smile of a sleep deprived person about to succumb to the land of Nod... the alarm started going again.

And so went my weekend.

Sao, napping professional, hardly noticed...