Taking a nap was a big mistake
Oh my GOD I am tired. It was all fine and good, the 3-5 hours of sleep per day not bothering me one itty bit (well, hardly) until today (my first day off, sort of, not including about a dozen things I kind of also have to do) I lay down on the bed for a wee nap and then woke up feeling like if I didn't go back to sleep that very second I could pretty comfortably leave the hotel and go back to sleep on the Boston sidewalk in the rain. I am now sort of staggering around feeling like I am beating off sleep with a stick. It is working so far, but not for long.
What a week. Well, a week and a half. Roundup: one lecture, a class, three readings, nine interviews, four cities, countless subway and taxi rides, four train rides, two plane rides, a lot of important dinners which are currently escaping my mind, some other stuff, and (I'm counting) 40 hours of sleep. Now, doesn't that sound like a lot? Aha! But I should have had 80 hours in the last ten days. Hence the onset of this agressive nap-needing. However. There have also been dozens of wonderful readers to meet, great discussion, a chance to see friends, and a whole lot of emails I'm honored to get. To all the people who've written in the last week or so, thank you so much for your stories and thoughts—I'm very grateful to have readers who take the time to send me a note. It's a priveledge.
Yesterday was classic. Jeff and I left the hotel at 5:30 a.m. for planes at separate airports yesterday morning, heading for two total snafus. As you may have heard, the airlines were in a tizzy yesterday. Well, I missed the tizzy, but managed to arrive at Laguardia in plenty of time for my flight, checked in at the little self-check in kiosk, went to hurl my very overweight luggage onto the scale, presented my ticket, and was cheerfully informed that I was at the wrong terminal. What?? Who knew there was more than one terminal? Why didn't the cabbie say something? SO, off to another part of the airport to catch a bus to the other terminal, dragging my vastly overweight luggage. The bus arrived, I dragged my vastly...luggage (VOL) up the bus's steps while the driver peacefully watched and didn't help and collapsed in a seat. Then I realized I was at the bus's first stop of five, and there would be more (and more, and more) people getting on. So I got up and dragged the VOL as far back as I could on the bus without running into the other people and their VOL. A family of eight adults got on the bus. They included an elderly mother and a very elderly grandmother, and they lined up throughout the bus and had an enormous multipartate fight at the top of their lungs, which fight involved issues of money, bills, and (I'm certain) something about Valentine's Day. Off the bus, into the new terminal, finally divesting myself of the VOL, in and out of my shoes at security (I HATE that), finally seated with a cup of coffee to watch while the three flights after mine were cancelled in quick succession, necessitating for some reason a trip to the back of the airport and a long line to get on a flight in a new plane, which was then changed, and then there was something about the flight crew which was, and then was not, and then was about to arrive, and then in fact did arrive and off we flew. Meanwhile, at the JFK airport, Jeff was sitting in the Delta club lounge watching his flight be delayed, delayed, backed up, delayed, cancelled, reinstituted, delayed, and leaving a variety of messages on my cell phone telling me he'd meet me in Boston at 10, 11, noon, 1, 2, and that was the last I heard from him, so I assumed he'd died. Upon landing, I called my editor, with whom I'd be jetting around the city going to interviews with (that was a dangling participle, sorry), and we decided we'd cancel the escort who was going to be taking me around since we'd be together and the escort was unneccessary. A few hours later, she and I met at my hotel, and, both looking surprised, said to each other, "Where's the car?" Because it turned out she'd thought, ok, yeah, we don't need an escort, but forgot to think about the fact that the escort had the car, and I thought SHE had the car, and so we were about to be late for an interview on "Here and Now" (airtime TK). Because she and I had both been up until the crack of dawn the night before in New York and then gotten up at the slightly later crack of dawn to get to Boston, we were both a little slap-happy and laughed our butts off all the way to the radio station. Then we were off to coffee and a meeting with the creative writing director at Lesley College (great school!), and then we were totally running late for the reading, so we RACED back from Cambridge to the hotel, I threw on what I very much hoped were clean clothes, and we dashed off to the reading, WHICH WAS AWESOME. Boston, I love you. I had SUCH a good time at the reading last night. I hope you did too.
And in further drama, this morning Jeff made me call my publicist to get her to rearrange the rental car so he could pick it up without me, then we decided we'd call to rearrange it ourselves, and they told us he COULDN'T pick it up without me, so we decided never mind, and then the publicist called back to say she'd rearranged the car and now there was a new reservation for Jeff...who, by the way, did wind up in Boston, and is now making us totally late for checkout.
The impending nap will have to be postponed. But here's to Saturday coming tomorrow--trust me, I intend to sleep the whole day away.
Happy Friday!
M
What a week. Well, a week and a half. Roundup: one lecture, a class, three readings, nine interviews, four cities, countless subway and taxi rides, four train rides, two plane rides, a lot of important dinners which are currently escaping my mind, some other stuff, and (I'm counting) 40 hours of sleep. Now, doesn't that sound like a lot? Aha! But I should have had 80 hours in the last ten days. Hence the onset of this agressive nap-needing. However. There have also been dozens of wonderful readers to meet, great discussion, a chance to see friends, and a whole lot of emails I'm honored to get. To all the people who've written in the last week or so, thank you so much for your stories and thoughts—I'm very grateful to have readers who take the time to send me a note. It's a priveledge.
Yesterday was classic. Jeff and I left the hotel at 5:30 a.m. for planes at separate airports yesterday morning, heading for two total snafus. As you may have heard, the airlines were in a tizzy yesterday. Well, I missed the tizzy, but managed to arrive at Laguardia in plenty of time for my flight, checked in at the little self-check in kiosk, went to hurl my very overweight luggage onto the scale, presented my ticket, and was cheerfully informed that I was at the wrong terminal. What?? Who knew there was more than one terminal? Why didn't the cabbie say something? SO, off to another part of the airport to catch a bus to the other terminal, dragging my vastly overweight luggage. The bus arrived, I dragged my vastly...luggage (VOL) up the bus's steps while the driver peacefully watched and didn't help and collapsed in a seat. Then I realized I was at the bus's first stop of five, and there would be more (and more, and more) people getting on. So I got up and dragged the VOL as far back as I could on the bus without running into the other people and their VOL. A family of eight adults got on the bus. They included an elderly mother and a very elderly grandmother, and they lined up throughout the bus and had an enormous multipartate fight at the top of their lungs, which fight involved issues of money, bills, and (I'm certain) something about Valentine's Day. Off the bus, into the new terminal, finally divesting myself of the VOL, in and out of my shoes at security (I HATE that), finally seated with a cup of coffee to watch while the three flights after mine were cancelled in quick succession, necessitating for some reason a trip to the back of the airport and a long line to get on a flight in a new plane, which was then changed, and then there was something about the flight crew which was, and then was not, and then was about to arrive, and then in fact did arrive and off we flew. Meanwhile, at the JFK airport, Jeff was sitting in the Delta club lounge watching his flight be delayed, delayed, backed up, delayed, cancelled, reinstituted, delayed, and leaving a variety of messages on my cell phone telling me he'd meet me in Boston at 10, 11, noon, 1, 2, and that was the last I heard from him, so I assumed he'd died. Upon landing, I called my editor, with whom I'd be jetting around the city going to interviews with (that was a dangling participle, sorry), and we decided we'd cancel the escort who was going to be taking me around since we'd be together and the escort was unneccessary. A few hours later, she and I met at my hotel, and, both looking surprised, said to each other, "Where's the car?" Because it turned out she'd thought, ok, yeah, we don't need an escort, but forgot to think about the fact that the escort had the car, and I thought SHE had the car, and so we were about to be late for an interview on "Here and Now" (airtime TK). Because she and I had both been up until the crack of dawn the night before in New York and then gotten up at the slightly later crack of dawn to get to Boston, we were both a little slap-happy and laughed our butts off all the way to the radio station. Then we were off to coffee and a meeting with the creative writing director at Lesley College (great school!), and then we were totally running late for the reading, so we RACED back from Cambridge to the hotel, I threw on what I very much hoped were clean clothes, and we dashed off to the reading, WHICH WAS AWESOME. Boston, I love you. I had SUCH a good time at the reading last night. I hope you did too.
And in further drama, this morning Jeff made me call my publicist to get her to rearrange the rental car so he could pick it up without me, then we decided we'd call to rearrange it ourselves, and they told us he COULDN'T pick it up without me, so we decided never mind, and then the publicist called back to say she'd rearranged the car and now there was a new reservation for Jeff...who, by the way, did wind up in Boston, and is now making us totally late for checkout.
The impending nap will have to be postponed. But here's to Saturday coming tomorrow--trust me, I intend to sleep the whole day away.
Happy Friday!
M
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