Purple Circles

I've been up for several hours now today; on my fourth cup of coffee now too. But nothing seems to be working to bring me to "life." No energy, just want to go back to sleep it as my solution of the day.

When I looked in the mirror this morning, my eyes seemed to have a dark cast beneath them - sort of a purplish circle effect to prove to me that they weren't fully rested, wanted more z-time I think.

But the purple circle effect appears to be following me all over now too.

First cup of coffee in hand, I headed to the computer - of course. Check the e-mail, read the morning paper from State College online, see what was new and exciting in the world. Nothing going on there but lots of e-mails coming in, so that might perk me up a bit.

Kids had their breakfasts, Mandy left for work. Maya was being exceptionally good, playing quietly and I started into reading the e-mails. I made my big mistake there in seeing Maya enjoying some of her toys, doing so well playing with them, I guess I must have turned off my "inner hearing" sense - that one you need to keep on all the time when dealing with three-year-olds.

I kind of got lost reading the e-mails. Apparently I was concentrating so strongly on the topics coming in there today that I didn't notice Maya had moved from the middle of the living room floor till all of a sudden, I heard this strange kind of squeaking nose directly behind me.

I swung around in my chair and what did I see? Purple circles right behind me!

All over the wall that is behind me! Nice big purple circles there to adorn the white painted wall just off to the left and behind my computer desk already there and little Miss Maya standing there, purple marker pen in hand, merrily drawing more and more of these circles all over!

Oh brother! Her mother is going to really pitch a hissy fit over these gems! Yes indeed!

I jumped up -well if you can call my slow movements to bring my tired body out of the chair jumping - but that's what it was intended to be. I grabbed the marker out of Maya's hand and gave her a lecture - consisting mostly of just repeating to her "NO! No, no, no, no, NO!!! You don't draw on the wall!"

Her response, as expected, was a sad, disappointed, kind of shocked gaze at me as I continued ranting at her and the mouth curled up, tears rolled down her cheeks, amazed that Grammy didn't appreciate her marvelous mural done oh so lovingly.

Off to the kitchen to grab the "Mr Clean" miracle-worker sponge and a container of some kind of heavy-duty stuff to spray on the wall and try to rub hard enough to remove the marker circles but not so hard that it would mar the plasterboard surface under the paint. Took a good bit of elbow grease to get the area - about 2 foot in diameter - and pretty well colored in that radius as well - to come clean.

Ok, the marker is up out of reach now. She's back to playing in the middle of the floor again and I'm happy back to reading all kinds of excerpts writer friends are sending through today - "Friday Teasers" -from whatever it is each of them is currently working on. A book for some, short story for others, some "bad poetry" a couple more are playing with and I'm into my third cup of caffeine, hoping, praying pretty soon it will kick in and fully get me awake.

All was going fine then as I finished clearing out the e-mails, started down my blog to read the new postings there since yesterday. A few comments done, watched bits and pieces of some program on TV-land of the 100 Most Exciting Moments on TV and I don't know exactly how it happened but something caught my eye and there, beneath the bow window I see something I definitely didn't care to catch even the slightest glimpse of - more purple circles covering an even larger amount of wall space than had been drawn on the wall a short time earlier directly behind me!

Obviously, these were from an earlier episode today of Maya's mural meanderings because I knew where I had put that purple marker was completely out of her sight and reach.

I didn't even bother to yell at her over this discovery. Too late for that since she had long since abandoned that scene, moved on to strewing toys all over the middle of the floor.

I got up, poured my fourth cup of coffee and sat down again to slowly ingest this nice comforting hot liquid, write this up while hoping my fairy godmother would come in and gently scour that wall clean for me.

But now, still half-asleep, I look over and see those big swirls haven't evaporated as I had wished would magically happen and I'm gonna have to go repeat the wall-cleaning process yet again today.

One can pray I guess that it will be enough movement to finally bring some reserve energy into play for me. But I have decided that the next time I get up and look in the mirror and observe purple circles under my eyes again, I'm going to consider them a very bad omen for the day ahead and go crawl back into bed and sleep the rest of the day - or until I no longer am swimming in a sea of purple circles -or any other rainbow color the markers may hold within.

Better yet, maybe I will just trash or at least find a hiding place unreachable by little fingers or put out an edict to whoever the person is who lives here that bought the damned things and brought them into the house in the first place.

Purple circles - not for me!