Another Illinois governor, another criminal trial.

Greg and I lived in Springfield, Ill., when Rod Blagojevich began his term. Among the immediate problems his administration presented were the difficulty of fitting that name in a headline and Greg’s inability to pronounce Blagojevich.

The people of Springfield disliked him because he was the first governor who chose not to live in the capital. Instead, he flew between Chicago and Springfield at taxpayer expense. He said this was to avoid moving his children. Springfield folks took this mean that their schools weren’t good enough. And while Springfield was nowhere near as exciting as Chicago, it was afterall good enough for a certain tall, bearded president. And for the world’s most fabulous mutt, too.

Illinois has produced some great people, and I hope our next president will be one of them. But it has certainly provided some stinkers, too. At least if Blagojevich is convicted, he’ll have company. His predecessor, George Ryan, is in prison right now.

I had my monthly doctor appointment on Monday, and they checked my weight and blood pressure as usual. The nurse read the blood pressure numbers back to me: “98 over 68.”

She paused.

“Is that normal for you?”

And the tone in her voice suggested that these numbers were anything but normal. But perhaps I was some sort of alien life form that could survive with that type of blood pressure. I searched my brain, trying to remember my past readings and wondering just what was wrong with the current reading. Was I dying?

“Um, I think my numbers are usually pretty low?” It was more a question than a statement.

She glanced at my chart and nodded. I hopped online when I got home to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently my blood pressure falls in line with that of a professional athlete or a child. I prefer to think of myself as a professional athlete.

Winston rarely gives us the gift of sleeping through the night. He usually wakes me at 6 a.m. by pawing at me, biting me or jumping onto my head (I wish I were joking about that). That might be a fine alarm clock for some, but given that I go to bed between 1 and 2 a.m., he’s getting me up in the middle of the night.

When he does sleep late, it’s usually because I’ve left some article of clothing on the floor by the bed that he can curl up on. This was the case a couple nights ago. When I woke in the morning, he was still curled on my sweatshirt, perfectly quiet. What joy! He had allowed me to sleep through the night.

I started sneezing as I seem to do every morning lately because of allergies. I had already had a sneezing fit in the middle of the night, and in my fumbling for the tissue box on the nightstand, the book that was sitting there had been pushed to a precarious spot at the edge of the nightstand. In the morning, when I reached out to grab a tissue, my coordination was a little off and I knocked into the book. It dropped onto sound-asleep Winston. And maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad had this not been a hefty hard-back book that weighs several pounds. By cat standards, I dropped a literary boulder onto him. He bolted out of the room.

I’m feeling guilty, and also pretty certain that Winston isn’t going to sleep through the night again for a very long time. It’s hard to blame him now for jumping on my head.