My neighbor's shower sounds like a television jammed between channels with the volume all the way up. His shower is right on the other side of my bedroom wall, apparently, because I keep waking up and looking around for the television.

And my clock was mysteriously one hour ahead today. Not that the alarm had time to go off before my neighbor woke me. But it's a bummer to be woken at 7:30 and then find out it's 6:30. I missed a good hour and a half of sleep because Mr. LoudShower gets up earlier.

The morning sun is slanting in through the windows and splashing gold all over my walls. If I have to be up so early, at least it's pretty.

I had been skipping from dream to dream. For a while, I was at Pam's show, Call Us Crazy, and everyone was blond and taller than I am, which is a pretty good approximation of what Los Angeles is like for me in real life. Then I was somewhere in the Persian Gulf, someplace beautiful, maybe Bahrain, drinking tea and watching military planes flying overhead.

Big Network News is shipping my father off to the Persian Gulf in a couple of weeks. Thankfully, he won't be crawling around in the sand with the soldiers; he'll be in a press room in Kuwait or someplace like it. I'm never thrilled about my father being in the Gulf or the Middle East, but you've gotta go where the news is, as he always says. For a while, it looked like BNN would send him to Jerusalem instead. I can't decide which place I'd rather he not be.

There are birds outside my bedroom window. I think they're sitting in the window well on either side of the air conditioner. I can hear them but not see them. Cricket can hear them too, and they're driving her mad. I want to buy a little bird feeder and attach it to a window with a suction cup. Perfect television for cats.

It's 7:15am. What am I doing awake at this hour?