I'm not proud of all my sleeping around, I'll have you know.
Last night, Darin read me some of an article in San Francisco Focus magazine about Barry Levinson (Isn't love cute? we read magazine articles to one another long distance) and then he opened to another article on sleep disorders. He said, "Want me to read you this quiz?" Sure, quoth I.
So he read it and I answered yes/no questions such as, "Do you feel tired during the day?" or "Do you have a hard time getting up in the mornings?" (These may not be the exact ones, but these are close.) I answered yes to about two-thirds of them. As it turned out, if you answered yes to any of them, you should go see your doctor and start getting this checked out.
Hey, next lifetime, when I've got a spare afternoon.
One of the questions I answered "no" to was "Do you sleep through your alarm in the morning?" I never do; the alarm is a stern task-master, and when it goes off, I have somewhere to be.
Until this morning, of course.
I woke up at 6:30am to go to the bathroom and I realized I was so tired I would give myself an extra twenty minutes sleep. I reset the alarm from 7:00 to 7:20 and immediately dropped off again. The next time I looked at the clock it was 7:45 and NPR was in the middle of some story. Of course, Thursday mornings I have Nina's class and you can't be late to Nina's class, she'll rip you a new asshole, so I dropped out of bed (just as the traffic lady was talking about all the backups on the southbound Hollywood Freeway -- the 101, which I have to take south to school) and hustled out the door.
I made it in time -- the backups weren't quite as disastrous by the time I got out there -- but I yawned all the way through the class. Part of the problem was I woke up during REM sleep -- I was having the longest and most involved dreams that I can still remember now, which is a neat trick (in a few paragraphs you'll see why). I found it curious I had been having so many dreams because I haven't remembered my dreams at all lately. I like to write down my dreams in the morning, but I haven't had any to write down for weeks. This morning I couldn't write any down because I had to haul ass.
During class Evan and I did the scene we'd been rehearsing and got criticized for it, although she didn't have enough time to direct each scene as thoroughly as she'd like -- there are too many people in the class for that. I came home directly after class and after a bit of puttering around went to bed. I knew there was a nap in my future since I saw that 7:45 on the clock. I came home, I ate lunch, I went down to the mailbox and got today's Variety, I came back, I got in bed, and suddenly it was 6pm. I have no idea how much sleep I actually got, but I have learned these two things:
Remember all those faxes (faxen?) I sent out yesterday? I got a couple of calls back today. While I was napping. I tried my hardest to be Darinesque and be immediately alert when the phone rang; I probably just sounded stoned.
The first thing everyone wanted to be sure I knew was that these were unpaid internships; I'd be doing them for credit. I am convinced that credit-for-internships is something interesting only to undergraduates, who need all the credits they can get to graduate. I could give a flying fuck, you know what I mean?
I scribbled down the info about who, what, where, and when on the pad by my bed. Notepads by the bed -- they're not just for story ideas anymore. Then I'd go back to sleep and have several more movies worth of crazed dreams fly by until the next phone call. I'm glad I'm such a good notetaker while mostly comatose; there's no way I would remember what anyone said.
I wonder if I'm doing the right thing by doing an internship, at least doing one for a little while. I'm not too worried about whether I'll get one or not; the question is mostly, Which one do I want to take? I am wildly overqualified for any of them, and I wonder if they're wondering why I'm doing this. (Incoming Stanford graduate, will work for free!) I figure I have to get my industry bearings first, then I can hone in on a paying position.
Last night I got together with some of the other screenwriters I've met over the computer at Jerry's Famous Deli on Ventura. I had met Doris and Mj before, but I hadn't met the others. We had a pretty good time, although I zoned out of the where-does-an-independently-employed-person-find-health-insurance discussion.
For dinner I had a bowl of Jerry's chicken and matzoh ball soup. It had one of the world's largest matzoh balls in it, but overall it was just okay. My mother-in-law's is still better. Darin says he can make it and will make it for me some time. I'm holding him to this promise. I've come late in life to matzoh ball soup, but already I've discovered a taste for it.
During dinner I had a large Diet Coke, which I think caused the upset sleeping patterns I described up top. I'm just never drinking Diet Coke again, that's what I've learned from this experience.