The Night Shift

What a crap day yesterday was! It seemed like one long rotten mood until I got off work, then things began to look up because--I think I found a knit-night group I fit into (which is good), I made up an awesome shrimp dish for supper for me & Don (also good), then I knitted a few rounds on glove # 2 (even better), and managed to write a page for blogging (the best). My roll on the upswing went to hell when I couldn't fall asleep until after 1 AM. (I wish someone would serve cheese with my whine.) Poor me.

Everything looks different on a night dive. The day shift have all gone into hiding, nestled in nooks and crannies of the reef, some even fade their colors at night so they are better camouflaged against the dull coral. Eels, lobsters, and octopi come out to hunt for unwary fish. Coral polyps extend into the current to catch microscopic plankton, looking like animated flower petals. Schools of red fish with big black eyes slide out of their daytime shelter to hang motionless, dorsal fins erect, waiting to snap up the little fish that are their favorite food. Logic tells you that red might be a poor choice as a color for a nocturnal hunter but logic is wrong. Red doesn't reflect light like the silver dollar bright scales of the tarpon, it absorbs the light, making the Blackbar Soldierfish well-adapted to its world.

Not even close to my best effort, but, look!, it's writing! That's the point, right? Keeping my pencil moving? At least a few minutes a day? There will be a pause for a couple days now; I'm off to Chicago early tomorrow morning to meet friends (not writing friends, just regular friends [surprised I have regular friends? me too]) I'll be back on the blog sometime Sunday and I promise to write every day while I'm gone and to post it when I get back. Cross my heart...

--Barbara