Today, a page from my calendar:
9:30 a.m., telephone interview with local radio station.
11 a.m., tape television interview
Noon, tape radio interview with Sheilah Kass, at Baltimore’s NPR station.
3:15, telephone interview with newspaper in Winston-Salem, NC
I guess it’s time to figure out what, exactly, I want to say about this book.
This morning, inwardly fuming about daylight savings*, worrying about the dozens of little things that have to be in and around interviews, I stopped myself, forced myself to do a strict mental accounting.
I’m a fulltime novelist.
People actually want to talk to me.
My publisher has given me an extensive tour.
If the biggest problem on someone’s balance sheet is that it’s challenging to pack for a trip that bounces between two very different climates — then one doesn’t really have any problems.
I’m still bummed about daylight savings, however.
*It’s not the loss of sleep. It’s that I’m a morning person, whose days are pretty much calibrated to the sun coming up. The earlier the sun rises, the earlier I rise, and the earlier I rise, the more I get done. And given that I have to rise at 4:30 a.m. tomorrow to make my now-traditional 5:30 a.m. signing at Book Crossing in Brunswick, this early DST is really bugging me.
When I don’t get a ‘good’ parking spot when shopping, I remind myself that there have been a couple times that my back wouldn’t have allowed me to made it from the curb to just inside the door. So I pick up a cart from the parking lot on the way in, use it, then take it back inside after I’ve put my goods in the car. The idea of balancing my purchases on my head, or carrying them swinging from my shoulders, for however far the walk is home is so incredibly far from my reality.
I hate the early DST too. I’m a pre-work runner, and getting up to run in the dark is really prolonging my winter doldrums.
You are going to rock your media, laura!
I should mention that I had some good talking practice over the weekend: I talked myself out of a speeding ticket by disarming the police officer this way:
“I’m sorry, officer, I admit I was going too fast because I allowed myself to be distracted by this argument my husband and I were having.”
Officer: I can take care of that. (Turning to my husband.) She’s right.
Me: Oh, no, I was in the wrong. It really is all my fault. I’m so sorry. It was just inexcusable.
Got off with a warning.
Unfortunately my last speeding ticket was done by a camera. Thank you, DC.
It is hard to stop and be grateful for what we have instead of thinking about the annoying stuff- which can be so minor. I know the feeling-I should think -I have so much -esp in this economy- my house is paid off, my kids didn’t have college loans and I have a job that pays well- even if I am not that fond of it. Instead this morning, we were having a disagreement over how the espresso machine works(it’s a cheap one but hey, I have an espresso machine).
Exactly, Andrea. It falls under a wonderful phrase used (ironically) in Cyra McFadden’s The Serial: gnats in the yogurt.
I actually had a passage in Life Sentences that I could never make work, about the privilege of complaining about certain things. It’s sort of the opposite of, “You Know You’re a Redneck if . . .” More like, “You Know You’re Really Pampered If . . . “
You have your espresso machine. I actually have firm ideas about hotel bathrobes.
DST throws off my body rhythms making me disoriented for a few weeks. I really resent losing that hour in March. I welcome back the hour in the fall with open arms.
When my satellite dish goes out because it’s got snow on it, and I’m complaining about sitting in my heated home being deprived of a hockey game I wanted to watch, I remind myself that all I have is a first-world problem.