CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: LOOKING FOR OMENS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

I've been in a very restless mood lately.

Skittish. Jumpy. Utter hell, my friends tell me, to live with.

You know the feeling. You know, deep in your bones, that something's going to happen, and you just want it to happen and be done.

I don't have any logical reason to think anything's going to happen.

It's just a little niggling feeling that makes me look over my shoulder a lot, or glower suspiciously at my nearest and dearest.

Maybe it's the heat or the barometric pressure or the pollen count.

Maybe it's chronic PMS. That should liven things up. Mess around with a woman's estrogen levels, and lots of things can happen.

My friend Jana always knows when things are about to happen. I jokingly call her a one-woman psychic friends network. She says she just has good intuition.

She knew when her sister would be badly injured in a car accident a few days before it happened. She knew her husband was leaving a week before he actually started packing.

I should add she didn't do anything to stop him. Knowing Jana, she probably moved the suitcases so he could reach them more easily.

Jana doesn't especially appreciate her particular talent. She says she takes the long view, and it's not always a pretty picture.

She reminds me of a quote I once read from a woman who shot her drunken husband to death as he was coming after her with a baseball bat.

"If I'd killed him when I met him, I'd be out of prison now."

Sounds like a country song doesn't it?

I admire Jana's perspective, but it's hard to take the long view when you're as nearsighted as I am.

The real problem is, I hate change. Can't stand it. Love me, love my rut.

I only like happy surprises, like winning the lottery or learning Newt Gingrich and Marilyn Quayle are running off to Cancun to open a pottery studio.

Jana knows all about my current mood. A real friend would have warned me it was coming, but she just smiles and says I need to work on my "interior landscape."

I think she means meditate. Develop some inner resources. Stretch. Take chances. Do something risky.

I, on the other hand, am torn between new experiences and comfortable routine.

Hmm. Should I climb the Himalayas or re-read "Little Women"?

Let's really live dangerously and rent the video.

Of course, I meant the documentary on Sir Edmund Hillary's expedition.

Since I left my mountain-climbing gear in my other suitcase, I have to look and listen for signs and omens and signals that something is, or isn't, about to burst into being.

My horoscope keeps telling me to get my brakes checked. There's an omen for you.

Ever notice the similarity among these words: Happen, happy, perhaps?

I'm in just enough of a mood to be annoyed when English starts making sense.

In the meantime, I'm waiting to see what develops. Sort of an environmental Polaroid.

Maybe I mean paranoid.

Whatever.

~Peggy O'Farrell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.