A Nap Gone Horribly Wrong

I came home determined to win some money. I was through pussyfooting around. I was going to play solid and determined and build my stash. I've done okay this month, with some small wins and altogether I'm up about a $100 for the month, but I haven't made a final table, and my goal is five final tables a month, which would bring in a $1000 or so and make my hobby worthwhile, in addition to supplying a nice windfall to keep the wolf at bay.

I played one tournament, folded bad hand after bad hand, then saw the flop with a pair of sixes in a 5-way pot, a good proposition. It was a lively game with lots of raising, what poker players call good implied odds. It means you will get paid off when you win. The flop came 10-6-4, two clubs, and the betting was again crazy around the table. Someone bet, someone raised, I reraised, and a fourth player put in a final reraise. I wasn't alarmed--I had a set of sixes, a good hand, and this particular table was pushing maniacally with all kinds of lesser hands, so the set was probably good at this point, worth defending, a good hand to go broke with.
The turn card was a blank, a five of another suit, and the betting continued madly. I was firing away with the best hand, pretty certain I was correct in doing so. The pot had grown to 8000 chips by now, enough to catapault the winner into great position in the tournament.

The river card was an 8 of spades. This was mildly worrisome. The club draw had missed, and any overpair hoping to make a miracle overset had missed, but any clown foolish enough to withstand 10 raises to draw to a 7 had made a miracle straight. I wasn't as confident now, but logic dictated playing the hand out. It was the sort of draw "you have to pay off" if a player had it. And of course, the principal clown, the player who had made the most frantic and insistent of the raises, was playing from first position and turned over a 9-7 of diamonds. He'd bet like a fiend and called every reraise with an inside straight draw, and now he had 10000 chips. And I was down to a paltry 115, nearly busted and completely disgusted. Every decision had been correct. A great variety of other cards on the river, and I'm sailing to the final table and a good payday. That's poker. That's why I play, to draw with better cards against frantic fiends with worse ones. This was the Friday Night of the Frantic Fiend, triumphant with his Texas Chainsaw, hockey mask and the 9-7 of diamonds. That's okay. I hope he takes his wife out to dinner and makes love to her. Eleven other nights, Marie and I will have the rib eye and broccoli special at Boss Hawg's. And we'll have better attention either way.

Enough poker, I thought. Gretchen is probably thinking that already. I plunged in the shortstack on my next big blind, pot committed, had a couple of squares of delicious dark chocolate left over from our last delicious date, and decided to take a nap.

Here on the blog we have extolled many times the virtues of the two hour nap, the Greatest Invention in the History of Mankind, no matter what Doug says. I especially recommend them after horrifying personal experiences like river inside straight draws, and to get the week out of your system at the start of the weekend. Start your weekend with a two-hour vacation. Start slow, and gather your strength. Let your body know we're entering a better place and a better time, a furlough from the cell block and all its stresses. There are no shanks to be pulled on the weekend. It's safe to drop the soap. Be here and be whole. I slept like baby Ethan after a good warm jar of Gerber Macaroni and Cheese, dreaming blissfully of the next one. Got to see that chunker soon. I can't wait for him to meet Marie. She loves babies, especially adorable little boy babies, and babies invariably love her and come delightedly to life at her attention.

The nap proceeded perfectly according to plan and began its rejuvenating magic. It had been a rough week and two hours turned into three. That was okay. It must have been what my body needed, and my tired overstressed weekday brain was enjoying going along for the headsetless ride. No phone calls in the two hour nap. No angry customers, no inside straight draws. Just perfect peace. All I needed was the blue-eyed girl with the delicious curves and the fun curly hair, but those days are coming soon. Right now it was just good to rest.

Then it all ended abruptly with a persistent and maddening beep beep BEEP BEEP BEE-OPP BE-OPP. My alarm! I shook myself out of bed to turn it off. Why wouldn't it stop? It was ringing in my ears, louder and LOUDER. It won't stop. I pressed the button, I changed the time, I unplugged it from the surge protector but IT STILL WON'T STOP. Frantic and disoriented, I rushed into the hallway, the unplugged alarm still in my hand, trying to figure out why the hell my ears wouldn't stop ringing, why my brain was filled with this furious beeping, sure I was going to wake up the entire neighborhood and piss off a an entire street of vengeful dogs and cats.

Then I figured it out. Someone had fired up the barbecue and burned a steak. It was the smoke alarm, going crazy above my head in the hallway. This time I wasn't going mad, just out of sorts and disoriented in the dark. It was okay. I didn't need to smash my alarm clock in the driveway to make it stop. The cops weren't coming to haul me away, not yet.

Relieved to solve the beeping mystery I rotated my laundry and started another game. This time I was even more alert and decisive, and it took three inside straights to finish me off. Five dollars in the hole for the weekend. Five fifty to be exact. That's okay. The moon will set eventually, the maniacal straight drawers will return to earth. I'll be waiting when they do, well-loved and rested. I'll earn enough to go see my beautiful grandbaby boy, and we'll celebrate with two steaming bowls of macaroni and cheese. Just wait till Ethan is old enough to taste the kind you make from scratch. I hope I'm there for that day of lip-smacking goodness, and maybe his first crawl. That's the good stuff. Make room in your life for more of the good stuff. Set your alarm as infrequently as possible, and try not to burn the steaks.