A few notes on sleep, sickness, and slow rising.

1. Two successive weekends, I've come up with a little cold to make me miserable.

2. Both of these little colds I can trace to bouts of insomnia, long stretches of not quite enough sleep, plus a magical dose of stress sprinkles.

3. A pause to note that there are so many more, and much worse, problems in the world that I am truly sorry that this is what I have to write about tonight. But there you are. I am on the upswing from Little Cold #2, but my eyes still feel hot and I took a nap of necessity this evening, which on the one hand felt like a commandment from on high, and on the other hand is now making me nervous that I might not be able to fall asleep in an hour when I will want to be able to fall asleep.

4. Reiteration: other people have much worse problems. I know.

5. The other day, I wanted to say, when I was talking to my friend Kati, that I no longer stay up late or get up super early for things like grading or other projects. I wanted to say this, but let facts be submitted to a candid world:

• I stay up late, like, all the time. ALL the time.
• I never get up early to grade, NEVER, but I happen to have arisen super early to finish that talk I gave this past week. Stayed up late AND got up early.

So, in other words, I could not say this to my friend Kati. I had to admit that I am a serial stay-up-late-r, and that means I often don't get quite enough sleep.

6. Medicine. Naps. Dragging around. Feeling all hot-eyed. Etcetera. Staying home when the rest of the world is seeing movies. 

7. In a related matter: I hate getting out of bed like a shot, full of zip and ginger, ready to take on the world. In my ideal world, getting up would go like this:

• alarm goes off.
• I contemplate it.
• my eyes open, one at a time, then close again. For, like, a half an hour.
• I think about things while dozing. I think/doze.
• a half hour after the original alarm, I open my eyes again, one at a time. Depending on how that goes, I might keep them open, or I might close them again. For, like, fifteen more minutes.
• In the interim, I will have considered not working out, like, a dozen times. 
• But when I actually do get up, I put on my workout clothes and get it done.

8. In conclusion, waking up slow is the best and waking up like a shot is the worst. I would say this is a winter thing, but it's really applicable all year round. A slow wake up allows you to put your hands on your will to live. You really don't want to be walking around before you are fully situated vis a vis your will to live. You could hurt yourself, and that's a fact.

Signs that you need a little more sleep on a regular basis.

1. Things sound louder. Even things that, technically, don't make sounds.
2. Your days are extra-swear-y.
3. Your skin hurts a little bit, like, on the edges of things.
4. Are you hallucinating? Or does the sun seem extra knife-y?
5. So much sighing.
6. Extra biting replies, that, if you're wise, you'll file away till morning, or, like, a month from now, so that you can reevaluate whether they were or would have been advisory. (the answer is no.)
7. All the food in the refrigerator looks like it can turn into nothing that resembles a dinner.
8. Extra envy.
9. The normal squalor = instantaneously unbearable.
10. Super-charged crying at the least provocation, like maybe a sentimental bit on a television show? Whoa.

11:53 p.m., the people. Is it bedtime yet?

A few statements I would like to make.

After years--years--of being on the verge of a total breakdown, my oven finally gave us the finger. By that, I mean it kept on flashing an 'F1' on the control panel and beeping repeatedly. If that's not a big fat insult, I don't know what is.

In other news, we will be buying a new oven tomorrow.

Oven breakdowns, flipping the breakers so we could unplug all the wires behind the control panel that looked like they were the ones in charge of beeping, and so on, did not deter us from our nightly rounds. By this, I mean we went to see The Martian. Which was excellent.

Tomorrow, my writing group is coming over. Suddenly, all my lunch plans feel oven-centric.

Fine, soup.

When we were in Scotland, my daughter's oven broke down all of a sudden and it did not work nor did it get fixed the entire time we were there. I think there's a definite pattern here.

I intend to get in bed tonight and sleep like an international prize-winning sleeper. Sleep: I am coming for you.

The difference ten hours of sleep makes.

Yesterday, three days out from our epic and transatlantic journey back from Scotland, I found myself frayed to my very last nerve, so much so that the thought of going to see a movie made my head feel like bees were flying around it in an excessively closeup way. Also, the curry I ordered at medium heat felt way tooooooo spicy, as did the papaya salad. And I resented pretty much everything about my day. I actually found myself holding my head and davening in a meeting (on Saturday!) of our instructional team.

I also had this giant crushing papier-mache boulder hanging over my head by a very thin thread: the poem I promised to write for convocation, which is this coming Tuesday.

Have I known I need to write the poem all summer. Well, yes. Most of the summer, anyway. And did I start writing the poem back when I first heard about it? Kind of. Did I work on the poem on the flight back from Scotland? Sure I did.

And nonetheless, was I attempting the come-to-Jesus writing of the poem during the epicenter of the jet lag?

YES, okay? YES.

Anyway, I told my Scotland daughter about the crushing papier mache burden of poem I was fending off. From crushing me. This was after the davening and the head holding had already happened, but before the insult of the spicy curry and the head full of bees feeling. Here was our conversation:

What a sensible daughter! First of all, the suggestion to write a haiku, which: why didn't I *think* about/do that? And then the suggestion to find a poem I already had written! Why didn't I think about/do THAT?

Well, in fact, I did neither of these things. What I did was eat and whine about the curry, then come home and work on the poem.

At precisely nine o'clock, I took stock of the poem. It had two quatrains and many many many many single lines, aka 'notes.' I said (not aloud) SCREW THIS, walked into the bedroom and got under my faux fur blanket. And fell asleep until 10:45 p.m.

The historian took one look at me and said, 'Maybe I'll just take Bruiser for his walk and you can stay here.' I'm pretty sure I thanked him before I fell asleep again until seven a.m.

TEN HOURS.

I woke up, looked at the clock, gave it a kiss (in my mind), and was practically whistling when I walked back to my laptop and wrote that poem like a boss. The End. Sleep is the answer to everything.

A few thoughts on sleep, with inexact metaphors.

The people, these days, I have been resting an awful lot. Not today, not particularly. Today, I had breakfast with a poet friend, and then went to the Film Society for a couple of meetings, and then met with my colleague. And then drove out to a southwest corner of the valley to fetch my cell phone, but never mind. But yesterday, Sunday, I slept like nobody's business, pretty much all day long.

I think I am catching up on the sleep I haven't been getting for months. It feels compensatory. It feels like a kind of balancing of the books. It's like my sleep accounts have been depleted, like the way I was living my life was basically going to the Sleep ATM and withdrawing hours and hours and never putting any back. Does that metaphor even make any sense? I can see that it mostly doesn't, but I do feel like I have robbed myself--but why would I do that?--of something necessary and precious, and now I am going to sleep until I have paid myself back.

There is nothing so purely wonderful as falling into sleep--easily and without anxiety, just drifting into that dark, quiet place. That's what it has felt like as I have fallen into sleep over and over again, with no resistance, no fretting. Just falling into the dark.

I think I had my brief cold last week as a means of ensuring that I would do nothing, nothing whatsoever, but resting.

Currently, I am rereading a young adult book that I've read many, many times before. It is the perfect company for my sleep binge.

This sleep, it feels simultaneously like a luxury, like a kind of indulgence, but also like drinking water until a thirst is slaked. It feels like both things. Not that I feel I have much choice about it, but I am going to sleep until I have had my fill, until I am no longer indebted, but paid in full.

My theme song.

[huffing into the meeting of the seventh hour of the working day:]

me [to my colleague]: I'm so tired!

colleague: ...and why is that?

me: not enough sleep?

colleague: OH. That.

The Megastore recommends: the Take Your Own Advice Edition.

1. More sleep.  You know it, I know it: I don't get enough sleep. Maybe you don't, either. I need more of it. Preferably in this configuration:

a. Go to bed whenever I want to. You know, 1 a.m. or whatnot.
b. Get up when I wake up. Like, you know, 8 a.m. Or 8:30. Or let's splurge on 9 a.m., shall we?
c. Do this and that until 11. Try to speak to no one.
d. Get to work in my super productive style.
e. At an appropriate juncture--after lunch? sure!--take a little nap. Just 30 minutes. Okay,  45 minutes. I've earned it.
f. Work some more. Then:

REPEAT.

The working world was not made for people like me. Last night the historian pointed out that science has proven, via its science-y ways, that exercising in the morning before you've eaten is actually better than all the other timetables for exercising, like when people who follow the schedule above exercise, which is on their way home from work.

Well no thank you, science, for this awful insight into how even biology is apparently in on the conspiracy against me and my kind.

Even so: from this moment forward, I am going to try always to go to bed by midnight, instead of 1 a.m. And then maybe I will roll it back to the bedtime of farmers and country folk, 11:30 p.m. That's probably about as much as I can do. Take that, biology.

In conclusion:

Not sleeping: a field guide.

Here's the bed. Perhaps tonight, I'll get in it,
with the lights off, and fall asleep.
Like normal people.

Or maybe I'll feel sleep taking me, and I'll

close my eyes, lay there for a few minutes 

or a half an hour, then open my eyes 

and think: nope. And I will have missed 

my sleeportunity.

Maybe the unfinished crossword puzzle will 

be calling my name. And maybe I will answer 

yes.

Maybe I will need to keep reading something,

such as a literary journal. Or that Japanese book 

about tidying. Maybe I will need to write

a list of things, such as the things I need 

to tidy. Maybe I will need to fret about a few things. 

Like how tired I am certainly going to be, because 

I'm not sleeping.

Dear Sunday,

Despite my intentions, I woke up early today. The dog was at the door. That sounds like a metaphor, but it's not: Bruiser sleeps elsewhere, i.e., not with us, because he's a big guy and likes to sleep sideways.

But at some point in the early hours, he always comes to the bedroom door and requests entrance. We should just say No, Bruiser, because if we do, he'll retreat for awhile, and we can sleep a little longer. But usually one of us lets him in. That person tries to make it back to the bed, flipping the covers back over with great haste, so that the B settles between us but does not upset the overall sleep ecology. But I think you can see: it's an iffy proposition. It's always possible that he'll beat you to the bed and you'll be making do with the short shrift this arrangement offers, covers-wise.

So I got up, went out to get the papers. Came in, made breakfast. Began to read the news, bad and good news in whatever today's proportions seemed to be. Seems like a lot of bad news lately, doesn't it, Sunday? But Sunday is the only day that I can linger over a newspaper, so I always do.

I caught up with the bit of sleep I might have added to the night's later this afternoon. I lay down with my current novel, read a few chapters and sank into some dream set in the same strange country as the novel. Woke up, relieved that I hadn't slept as long as my epic dream seemed to indicate. The light slanted in the window at an approximate afternoon hour. I got up.

That's how it's been today, Sunday. Desultory and not particularly productive. Sleepy. Rainy. After a decidedly action-packed Saturday, I was pretty glad that you and I came to this agreement.

still resting,

htms

The Megastore recommends: The Not Sleeping Edition.

The people, I feel as if it has been years since I slept enough, every night, on a regular basis. I could explain, but why? There's a whole orchestra of reasons, most of which can be summarized with the catch-all word du generation: S-T-R-E-S-S.

I feel a little poem coming on.

Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of melatonin
Try a little meditation counting up some sheep
Rig your pillow so the cool side stays cool
Each night after every night
Sing a lullaby, sure go ahead and
Sing a little lullaby, cause you're an idiot insomniac.

Doesn't scan, but it does the trick, more or less. That's the situation.

This summer, I decided, would be the summer of, among other things, the Sleep Project. I was doing pretty well, too, until The Great Summer Cold of 2013. Which, thankfully, has now concluded. It was epic, but it's over. The last few nights, I've been sleeping easily and well, and therefore I do have a few recommendations to make, in case you, too, occasionally have The Troubles. With The Sleep.

1. Make your iced tea herbal. We all have to face it, the moment when caffeine, too late in the day, is not your friend. The moment when you're trying to sleep but you can feel your blood racing around like a crazy maniac. A crazy, caffeinated maniac. I recommend drinking iced chamomile tea with lavender. You can find this at your local grocery store, if your local grocery store is reasonably well-stocked. You can also go with mint tea, and you will not go amiss.

2. Stop freaking trying to do so many freaking things. This recommendation is nigh unto impossible to actually carry out in, y'know, real life. I do know people whose lives are exceedingly well-regulated, who know their limits, and who do pretty much only the things that they find necessary and/or satisfying. Here's the thing, though. Even I, a big over-achiever (I don't use this word in a laudatory sense), can do better. Peel off a few things, especially when the opportunity presents itself. Stop inviting myself to meetings. Ask myself if what I'm doing gives me pleasure or satisfaction. If it doesn't, then I should see if I can stop doing it. And if I, big over-achiever, can do this, so can you.

3. Finish something. O the very joy of finishing something! Today, my colleague and I finally finished the draft we're sending off to the editors of this one collection. (I would give you details, but it might bore me to death.) Did it give me joy to write this essay? Define "joy." Actually, by most any definition, this was not joyous writing. It was a slog and for great swaths of the writing, it did not feel worth doing. But there were moments. And then a few more moments. And hits of elation and, yes, satisfaction. And now! The joy! So: finish something. I bet you will sleep the sleep of the blessed, as I intend to do tonight.

4. When all else fails, have your Insomnia Kit ready. There are going to be some nights, let's
face it, when you're going to find yourself awake. Maybe you guzzled Dr. Pepper with your Thai Fried Rice. Maybe you have, despite your best efforts, a meeting in the morning. Maybe classes are going to start in a few weeks, but you have to worry about it right now. In this case, my friends, I recommend that you have your Insomnia Kit (TM) ready to go. For every person the Insomnia Kit (TM) will have different items. For me, it includes

• a sheet (blanket in the winter)
• my reading glasses
• the current book, or possibly
• the crossword puzzle I'm in the middle of.

Knowing where the Kit is makes it easy to take a break from not sleeping, and, after I've read a chapter or filled in a few puzzle squares or worried a little bit more or made a list, the Kit also makes it easier to slip back into bed, and with any luck, into sleep. 

Something new.

It turns out that our early morning arising is not a fluke but a thing, an actual thing, which we are repeating daily. Or I am, anyway. This morning, for instance, I awoke at about 6.

In case you're wondering, this does not go hand in hand with going to bed earlier. Not at all! No, last night, I went to bed at midnight and read for a few minutes before falling asleep.

This morning at breakfast, my daughter suggested that within a week I'd be back to normal. Maybe so. I'm kind of enjoying the quiet, the stillness, the freshness of these early hours. This morning, I got up and wrote a little, then took Bruiser for a walk.

I'm loving the light at the beginning of the day and at the end, when the everything seems to glow green and yellow. I'm taking more than one walk, and I love that. So if my sleep readjusts to a more habitual pattern, fine. But if I keep waking up early, fine, too. Better than fine.

So that's the update on The Summer Sleep Project. What's that? What other projects are happening this summer?

2. The Cooking Project, wherein I renew my love of and acquaintance with the making of dinner out of actual ingredients.

3. The Walking Project, wherein I walk several times a day, to give my cardiovascular system something to write home about, to commune with my dog, to let my brain do its synaptic business, to calm my soul.

4. The Writing Project(s). There are many.

5. The Gardening Project. I have big plans. Like, so big that they will require the assistance of able-bodied men, such as my youngest son and upon occasion the Historian. Also, I may not be being realistic. Shh, I'm going to plant delphiniums!

6. The Push-the-Reset-Button Project. In which I will shed my Indispensable Man complex and with it my many (over)commitments. (This also may not be realistic. Check my stress levels in August to see.)

7. The Just Enjoy It Project. Can this be a project? We shall see.

The Writing Project(s) update: today I am writing a Fourteen Hour Sonnet. Check the specs out here.

Back.

I heard the historian rustling around this morning at 5:30 a.m. I got up when I heard him go out the front door. I stood there in my nightgown as he picked up the paper from the driveway. It was light, the sky was gray. The whole yard--our meadow--was in bloom.

We got back in to the SLC last night around 10:30. We had been up, more or less--if you count the hours shoved into a coach seat on a transatlantic flight as "up"--for a little more than twenty four hours. I slept most of the flight from Dallas-Ft. Worth to SLC, but that was about it. So it was a little strange to be up at 5:30. Continuing our fine household tradition of not ever quite enough sleep, I guess.

All last night I dreamed about children, my own and my children's children, and rivers.

We've both unpacked. I'm on the last load of laundry. I have sent the first message of what, I'm sure, will be the many it will take to resolve an insurance issue, which we put off until we got home. My son kept everything in good shape while we were gone. Bruiser came in to say hello this morning and heaved a sigh as he settled in between us on the bed.

I am glad to be home. I wish I were still there.

I am downloading the pictures and paying some bills and considering some sandals and preparing to buy food and go to Target.

Hello, everyone. I'm looking forward to seeing you. But first I hope I manage a nap.

Days one two three.

The night before we left, we slept like logs. Anxious, four-hour logs. That's partly because of the grading, but also because we're packing until one a.m. Oh, and also because we had a super awesome flood in our basement. So that took a minute or a million to sort out. Oh, and also, I finished the grades for my English 2010 sections and got a note from a student within, like, minutes. So before midnight, I had already submitted a grade change request to the registrar.

Anyway. We slept those beautiful four hours like it was our job and also like they would be sufficient unto our needs. This may come as a big surprise, but four hours are not sufficient unto our needs, not by a long shot, not when we were to spend hours upon hours upon hours in planes and airports. We landed at the curb of the first of the airports at nine a.m., checked our bags all the way through to Scotland, and I settled in to grade. In the airport.

 


...which, of course, took me only so far. Then we got on a rather tight, squeeze-y airplane with no wireless of course. Luckily, I bought the Esquire with Leonardo Dicaprio on the cover, so that was awesome. No sleep yet, by the way, for those keeping track at home. In Chicago, we (a) ate a pizza, I (b) spoke to my mother, and (c) completed, almost, my grading. Just two stragglers. I was feeling good.

Me: I just finished my grading. High five!

The historian: Yay!

Me: ...just two more stragglers.

The historian: ...wait, two more? Should I withdraw my high five?

Then we got on the long, long, loooong flight to London. That's a long flight, for your înformation. We waited awhile for that flight, because, like all flights in these dark times, this flight had to cope with technical glitches and not having yet been tidied up from the previous flight.

And when we boarded, the flight manager overlords were very brisk and all business. People we still getting their carry-ons hoisted into the overhead bins when the captain was all, "get you seatbelts on, damn you! We've got time to make up from or technical glitches and inadequate tidying!" while the rest of us we tightening out seatbelts and trying to look ready to got, yessir!

I sat next to a man and his two-and-a-half year old child. As I'm sure you have surmised simply from the words "two-and-a-half year old child," this could have gone one of two ways: hellish disaster or medium hellish disaster. But you'll be happy to know it was neither, unless you are a secret and unknown-to-me nemesis, in which case: ha ha, secret nemesis! the kid was charming and a good sleeper, and I didn't have any biggish seat mate elbows or knees or other biggish body parts to cope with.

However, I did not sleep. And that's the truth. A long fight when you are supposed to be sleeping--they turn the lights out and give you a blanky--is no fun when you cannot sleep. There I was, stuck with my own personal attitude, and a charming two-and-a-half-year old on one side of me, the to-all-appearances-sleeping historian in the other, and my iPod doing its job, which was to console me in my hour of need. My not-sleeping hour. Hours. And hours.

Heathrow, baby:

Heathrow is like the ten labors of Hercules, all in one gargantuan, baffling, labyrinthine ordeal. So I always try to allow plenty of time for going to the wrong place, twice, misreading their crazy signs, and what have you. Which, in this case, we did not need, because everything went perfectly. At this point, still no sleep to speak of, although I did have a really great salad at the Pret in concourse 5. I accomplished my final final grades. Well, minus one of the stragglers, so: almost my final grades. In Heathrow. So: international!

After staggering around a little bit and sitting a lot, got on the very last flight. Whereupon, I fell asleep for basically the entire flight, one and one half hours. It was so choice. I highly recommend it.

When we got to my daughter's house, we hung around, ate some sweets,

Played a game,

 

and fell into bed at ten.

"Maybe to reset the insomnia clock, you need to be awake for 30 hours straight," my daughter observed.

That, and a post-lunch nap.

Sleeping well in the U.K., thanks.

 

 

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Sleep clinic.

The people, I am not sleeping. Not right now, and not lately.

Possible explanations:

• excess of adrenaline from recent projects and regimens?
• character flaw?
• too damn jittery?
• not writing? 

I don't know, but something's gotta give.

I've never been a particularly prodigious or accomplished sleeper. I think there are some people for whom sleeping is a great gift. I'm pretty sure I need to do an overhaul of my sleep process.

[NOTE: the above sentence is one of those indicators that I just need to chill. the. eff. out. Good Lord.]

I remember, returning to my meandering, when I was a high schooler and I had a stereo, which was a thing, kids, with a "tuner" and a "turntable" and, if you were lucky, a "cassette deck" which allowed you to make mix tapes. I used to check records out of the library and if I really liked them, I would tape them, and then I would listen to them over and over until the tape broke. I remember the 120 minute tapes being particularly susceptible to breakage. Anyone else remember that?

Sometimes I would play a record or a tape to help me sleep. I repeatedly checked out this album by a prog-rock/jazz group called Mandrill. Maybe they were geniuses, I don't know. I liked them, and particularly the last track on this one album, which was lovely and--sorry--flute-y, and it, maybe, relaxed me. Or seemed like it should relax me.  I also remember one night, lying in the dark, listening to the Doors, "Rider on the Storm." That song is pretty much just endless. And lulling. And, it must be said, a little tedious. Did it put me to sleep? I really can't say, but it's emblematic to me of music that might be sleep-inducing.

I'm super-hopeful that tonight will be the night I turn this nonsense around. The night I fall asleep without noticing myself not sleeping, and wake up mostly refreshed, and then that will be that. Just in case, I've put together a sleepy playlist. I'm not going to listen to it--hell no. I don't sleep with music anymore--that's just asking for it. (Sometimes on a plane, I can drowse to music. But on a plane, all bets are off, and that's the truth.) Anyway, I put some drowsy songs and some songs with "sleep" in the title, and also "Riders on the Storm" and the Mandrill track. Even if I don't listen to this playlist, I hope that putting it together will be an offering to the gods that regulate sleep. Maybe they'll let me fall in without incident. We'll see.

Dear writing:

After a week with four rejections and a months-old draft that just kept sitting there, being drafty;

after a day when I felt the lack of you,

as well as my own disappointment with myself, more piercingly than ever,

thank you, writing, nonetheless for standing by me:

thank you for moving me at 1 a.m. from what felt like sure sleep

to get up, because there was something that needed to be written,

something that kept me from sleep, something urgent enough

that I decided to get up and write it.

And thank you, even, for the four and half hours of sleep I lived with today,

because every moment at the thin edge of exhaustion,

it was there, that new piece, what I traded for sleep.

yours, htms

Dear intermittent transitional sniffle,

By my count, this is the third interval at which you have recurred since September began. With the listlessness. The hot eyes. The, yes, unfortunate itchy, sniffly eponymous nose. I am, quite frankly,
a little annoyed that you are here again.

Intermittent transitional sniffle, what angel are you? What messenger? Are you here to tell me that cold is coming? That the days will be darker?

If I had to guess, I'd wager that you're telling me in all but words--in the language of the symptom--that I need more sleep. And also that, with more sleep, I would not feel, at this moment, so beleaguered, stressed out, overwhelmed all at once--and really, at an escalating rate over the last week and a half. Sleep, you're saying. Sleep!

Intermittent transitional sniffle: I hear you, but do you have to be so pushy?

htms

Here I am.

We got here at five yesterday. I made dinner at six thirty. There was an awesome thunderstorm and rain. I fell asleep reading at eight thirty or do and slept for eleven hours, give or take. Yeah. Happy labor day weekend, everyone!

 

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What'll I blog about?

I asked the historian while we were walking the dog.

"You could talk about how today went, your first day back home," he said.

Well, there's a topic. I think I might have addressed this topic one or a hundred times before. And you'd have a point if you said, "HTMS, you owe us fresh material. When you said you'd blog every day in the year 2012, we thought fresh material was implied."

I so agree. In fact, I said to the historian last night, when I was about to have a meltdown in the face of a combustible mixture made up of (a) my exhaustion, (b) my gladness to be home, and (c) my exhaustion, "I hate to think that I've become one of those people." There was a thin edge of panic in my voice, as I recall.

"One of what people?" he said, because he's a solid citizen and will help a sister out, when she's exhausted/glad/exhausted/on the thin edge of panic.

"The kind of person whose equilibrium is so easily rattled!" Yep, that's the kind of meltdown I have--with stage-y dialogue. Insufferable, that kind.

Well, I did go to sleep, after walking the dog, and woke up feeling quite a bit closer to restored. Then I fell back asleep some more and dreamed that my children and my sister's children were all sleeping over in a big mess of children, kind of like a nest of puppies, except that among them was one vampire child. That's enough to wake a person up a second time. That time, I got up, got showered and dressed, and went off to a meeting, and another meeting. I gave myself a little credit for this show of professional responsibility and moral character--even, I daresay,for being a person whose equilibrium is, once rattled, rather easily recalibrated.

After that, I had lunch with my daughter and her nephew--that's right, my grandson, if you're keeping track--and came home. I had highmindedly let it be known that I planned to write this afternoon, but instead I took a short nap and read some stuff and did some laundry. After this massive show of productivity, there was nothing for it but Mexican food and a movie and a dog walk and a little late night television.

The answer to everything is sleep, the people, is the moral of that story. That, and--according to my dream--the police are the ones to call when you need help with your stray vampire child.

 

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May I just say

that it was hot when we drove down the mountain, and then it was hotter. But the historian heroically hooked up the swamp cooler, and life looked better from that moment on.

Here's how I would summarize our Idaho sojourn:

• we saw lots of new places in and around the Island Park caldera
• I slept like a champ, most nights, and averaging out the sleep got at least 8 hours every night--sleep worth noting! Huzzah!
• read 10,000 books, or a lot of them anyway.
• ate mostly healthy food, and 
• got my writing groove on.

Now that I am back in my regular house, I am happy to contemplate

• having the coolness, due to swamp cooleritude
• eating mostly healthy food, but especially Mexican food--that's healthy, right?
• reading another 10,000 books
• sleeping like a champ (I hope I hope I hope I hope)
• writing two hours every day.

That's right. Two hours. Every day. It is good. You turn off the internet and you write. You pick up something you wrote yesterday or the day before, and add some more to it. You free write something using a topic or prompt or idea you thought of. But the main thing you do is you write words, and you do not do internet "research," which sometimes turns into internet "shopping," as in you buy a book you need because you need to know something. For your poem. NO. You turn the internet OFF and you write words. For two hours, and that is a promise, the people.

After I have written two hours, I plan to watch lots of movies. I consider seeing movies to be part of my purpose in life, which could be considered part of my job. And, therefore, since it is my job to see the movies, you can count on me: I will see them. I will see all the movies.

The weekend.