late night with stevie nicks

I've been working 12-hour days for the past 2-3 weeks and frankly, it's starting to affect my sanity. I look wild-eyed at times and am prone to mood swings far more severe than even the most melodramatic teenager. I've come this close to barking at coworkers. Oh, who am I kidding? I have barked at them. Well, no, growled would probably be more accurate. I'm tired. They should know this and then step aside.

I got home extra late last night because I decided to meet some friends after work. It mattered not that I had just spent the past 12 hours staring at a computer and hadn't eaten anything substantial since lunch. I went out anyway and had me a Murphy's Stout for dinner. It's almost as thick as a smoothie so I surmised that it must pack the same nutritional wallop. You gonna disagree with a self-proclaimed crazy bitch? (Ed note: The Jersey 'tude and accent come on full-force when I'm tired or drunk. You've been warned.)

Even though I was exhausted when I got home, I needed to wind down before going to bed. I checked my email and replied to a few time-sensitive ones, which I'm sure if I reread today would make me cringe because of the appalling amount of typos and really poor sentence structure. Please note the irony that the preceding sentence was poorly constructed.

While reading and writing in a sleepy haze, a couple of words leapt off the screen and rifled through my vast memory of song lyrics before settling on the closest match -- "Rooms on Fire" by Stevie Nicks. For reasons I cannot explain, I was reaching into the nether regions of my register and bleating along to Stevie at 1:00am. It wasn't a conscious decision at all -- it was as automatic a reflex as blinking. My mouth just opened and out came a really tired-sounding -- and bad -- impression of Stevie's coke-ravaged vibrato. The song wedged itself into my brain and I kept singing the chorus over and over again. It wouldn't stop. "Weeeeeell, maybe I'm just thinking that the rooms are all on fire. Everytime that you walk in the room..."

I find that the best way to extract a song from one's head is to listen to the original, so I found my copy of Timespace and had quite the sing-along. "Stand Back," "Edge of Seventeen" and "Sometimes It's a Bitch" were all accounted for. As I screeched along to "Talk to Me," I was convinced that I was on key note for note. I was so pleased that I starting adding more Stevie songs to the running list of tunes I will one day sing when I front a band. Or, you know, at karaoke or whatever. Speaking of which... Jess and Sheila, if we do rock the mic again, kindly remind me of my intense need to sing "Leather and Lace." You may join me in the duet. I'll even do the Don Henley part if you feel funny.