it has to do with being horizontal and unconscious.
Running news:
Today: 3 miles.
Yesterday: the gym.
Sunday: 4.7 of the worst miles I have ever done. I ended up walking half of them.
Not entirely surprisingly, Saturday's baby shower wiped me out, because in addition to getting ready for it in the morning, I cleaned up afterwards. I don't remember what I did Saturday night. Read, most likely, followed closely and more importantly by long periods of coma. I think Darin was hiding out at the Boys', playing Starcraft.
Sunday I had an incredibly bad run--I think I was dehydrated from drinking caffeinated coffee on Saturday, and I haven't had much if any caffeine for the last several weeks--followed by (what else) meeting my friend Tori for coffee. She just moved to the area with her boyfriend Danny and is looking for crew positions on a TV show, a feature, whatever, as she moves ahead with her ambition to be a director. We talked about what we'd been doing for the year and a half since we saw one another last.
After chatting for what seemed to be a week, I said, "I have to go home now." I glanced at my watch: an hour had gone by.
I went home and went to bed.
Darin came home and made some noise until I went, "SHHHH!!!" After which I fell right back to sleep.
Darin woke me at 3pm, however, because we had a barbecue at the Boys. We were supposed to be there at 2, which Darin translated to "Food is served at 3:30." And he was right. We came, we brought peach pie, we ate steak and potatoes and mushrooms. We watched Bulworth, which Darin had heard had been edited slightly differently in the video version, but we didn't notice any differences. There are some things that still bother me about the movie--character motivations not the least among them--but I still enjoyed it again.
At 6 I said, "I have to go home now."
Darin came with and settled in to play some Starcraft on Battle.net with Rob. I went to sleep. I woke up at 8 Monday morning, which is the equivalent of sleeping all morning for me.
I refused to get out of bed, however, and I snuggled next to Darin whilst reading Angels Flight by Michael Connelly. I can't believe how long I had a Harry Bosch novel sitting in my To Be Read pile. I read half of it--another excellent mystery, although I was annoyed by Connelly's mentioning a fictional movie version of another one of his books, Blood Work--and then went upstairs to begin work.
I began work by discovering how to crash my Palm. And finding that this particular model, at any rate, would not respond to resetting measures. So I called the Palm help line and, after being told everything that's in the damn manual, hearing, "You've got to return it and get a new one."
The scariest words in any language: "I need to return something to Fry's."
I drove over to Fry's and exchanged it for a new Palm in something under a millenium, so I was pleased about that.
On the way back I stopped at the gym and did my workout.
Then home again to finish Angels Flight and then shower before writers group (and wine drinking society).
We met for three hours and spent most of it talking our butts off. We spent some time on my script (Linda had read it, Gonzo hadn't yet) and some on Aaron's (here are some minor corrections, now go send it out), but mostly we talked about stuff that was going on. I realized my mind was wandering and at 10 I said, "I have to go." Linda was more than happy to get me out of there; I think she was hoping my enthusiasm for going home was contagious and Aaron and Gonzo would follow me out the door. I have no idea if they did or not. I just went home and fell asleep.
I woke up at 6:45 and dragged my butt out the door to do 3 miles. (After Sunday's terrible run, I didn't want two horrible, undoable runs in a row.) And I dedicated the morning to get caught up in my journal, so that those of you who've been sending me mail wondering what happened to me will be reassured that I'm fine.
And then I did pretty much nothing with the rest of my day. Yes, fine--everybody pile on, rag on me for being a sloth, tell me how tough things would be if I had a real life. (Can you tell I'm gearing up for mail from Beth?)
I hate myself for wasting an entire day. I recently got into a riff on how the old saying "Time is money" is crap, because time is way more valuable than money: you're only guaranteed so much time in this life. Then I waste some.
The outward sign was severe exhaustion--I lay down and could barely get up--but I know what it really is: have 5 damn pages to go in this rewrite and I'm at the "This is the stupidest fucking idea anyone has ever had for a script" stage. Because if I finish it, I have to show the pages to people and get their feedback and hear that, you know, it's crap. (I might also hear that it's okay but needs work. I'm fairly certain I'm not going to hear, "Great! Ship it!")
And I know I'm going to have to do a rewrite of some magnitude before sending it out anyhow.
Most valuable thing I did today: went out and got us lunch without asking. I got a chicken and some pita from Zankou Chicken. Darin was very happy that I did that (because fixing food is not one of those things that enters his zone of "Must Do Today"--can you imagine?).
DIANE
Don't say I never do anything nice
for you.
DARIN
Why on earth would I ever say
something like that?
I felt the need to cuddle him for that, but he had to go back to work.
The Sopranos begins a repeat of its 13 episode season on June 9. Mark your calendars. If you didn't see it the first time around, get it then.
And if you're not watching Sports Night, shame on you!
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com