In an interview on NPR, I heard a woman describe herself as “the worst combination of Irish temper and German stubbornness.”
Huh, I thought. Maybe that explains it.
It’s been a restless week here, and I’m running woefully far behind on sleep. You’d think that sending the visitors home and being back in my own bed would help the matter, but you’d be wrong. Sunday night I spent two hours hovering between sleep and awake, as per usual. I don’t know what it is about Sunday night that makes it special, but let me tell you, that 4:30 AM alarm comes awfully soon when you’re still up at midnight.
The not sleeping rest of the week has been entirely my fault — staying up to read blogs, write posts, carry on e-mail conversations, etc. (I’m quickly noticing that my laptop and wireless internet connection are bad influences. Bad, technology, bad!)
I even tried to catch up on a little sleep by taking a nap the other day. So as to not futher mess up my sleep schedule, I set my alarm and everything. Thirty minutes later, when the alarm went off, I shut it off and slept for another 45. Whoops.
All this to say: I’m tired. So what am I doing tonight? Why, going to the San Francisco Opera, of course! (An opera about a would-be rapist, no less.) Because what better way to spend an evening when you’re beyond tired, than to sit in a comfortable chair in a darkened room surrounded by strangers for hours on end, with a guarantee that you won’t be home before 1 AM? Oh, yes. Genius.
(Dear God, please do not let me fall asleep at the opera. Or on the drive home. That will not be pretty. Amen.)
But how could I say no? It’s the opera! In San Francisco! And I get to wear a pretty dress! And shoes! And wrap! A nice, big wool wrap, because it is only 55 degrees in San Francisco in June!
The opera will be lovely, but I suspect that my love will not extend to the alarm clock tomorrow morning. Just a hunch.
As for yesterday’s snit…my ire was raised not by the implication that I’m old — look, people, I have a 9 PM bedtime (ideally). I listen to NPR. I go to the opera. YES, I AM OLD. — but the implication that a widely-reported news event from the early ’90s might only be remembered by those who are “old enough.”
Really, NPR? What sort of audience demographics do you think you have? Are there a lot of listeners out there under the age of 25 who are totally unaware of the existence of Biosphere 2? I didn’t think so. Save your “maybe you remember when…” intros for things that are really old, like pieces about Mr. Wizard and mix tapes, okay?
Steve Inskeep: Some people may be old enough to remember Biosphere 2 — that big glass terrarium in the desert outside Tuscon, Arizona. …
Dear NPR,
Fuck you. I am NOT old.
Love,
Me
P.S. — I’m sure we’ll be friends again by the time All Things Considered airs.
Wow. Apparently I get a little crabby when I stay up past my bedtime. (Uh, 9 PM.) Sorry about that.
The parents have returned safely to their homeland, and now we can get back to our regular schedule of intermittent and all-too-infrequent posting here. Ahhhhhhhh.
We’re so accustomed to living far away from each other that sometimes it’s weird spending that much continuous time with my family. While all that togetherness drives me a little crazy, I am often struck by an overwhelming sense of “I am SO MUCH their child.” (This is not unique to me — my siblings suffer the same fate.)
These days, though, we’ve moved into more of a peer relationship, and less of a parent-child relationship. We talked about financial planners and life insurance and mutual funds, people, mutual funds. (I’m in need of one. Anyone have a recommendation?) In describing to my parents how the Comcast On Demand feature works, I characterized it as telling the remote control to “Bring me my movie, bitch!” Mom tried to scold me for using naughty language, but she was too busy laughing.
But then there were the times when I felt like the parent. Or at least the official worry-wart. They are clearly aging, especially my dad, and it concerns me. He often doesn’t realize you’re talking to him until the end of the sentence, and then you have to repeat the whole thing. He loves to drive and has spent most of his adult life in the transportation industry, but now he is less confident about where to go and how to get around unfamiliar places. He accelerates too much and brakes too little and is absolutely going to pitch a fit when we finally take the car keys away from him and, short of him being in a coma, I don’t know how to accomplish that task gently.
I think about where they might retire and if they can afford it and worry about them making new friends there. I wonder if we kids will live close enough and be available enough to help out, or if we’ll fall into the same visit-for-one-week-during-
the-summer schedule that defined our childhoods and our relationships with our grandparents.
I wonder if I worry too much.
But for now, when I’m not around to see it everyday, I can ignore their aging and they will live in my mind’s eye as the parents I left when I went away to college. And I’ll be surprised again at Christmas to see how much they’ve changed, and I’ll start worrying all over again.
Y’all. I am beyond exhausted, and yet I’m sitting here blogging when I could be asleep. Sadly, this is going to be short and only by way of explaining where I’ve been all week.
Last week was a crazy hellish week at work, filled to the brim with meetings. (Example: on Tuesday I had a meeting from 10 to 4, another one from 1 to 4, and someone else requested a 2pm. After I finished laughing so hard I cried, I made them reschedule for Wednesday.) And what better way to top off a crazy hellish work week than to have your parents arrive for their annual visit that weekend? Exactly. I spent all weekend prepping for their arrival: cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, baking a lemon meringue pie for Father’s Day (my dad’s favorite), etc.
Since then, I’ve spent the week trying to not be fired, while at the same time trying to entertain them. I love them dearly and am happy they made the trip out here, but I don’t think my parents appreciate the extent to which my saying “I have work to do” means “I have work to do; please leave me alone” and not “I have work to do, but instead please engage me in conversation and then let’s have some pie and coffee and then we’ll …” Sleep was the first thing to go, followed rapidly by zillions of brain cells, and lastly, my patience.
I’m headed to bed now. Tomorrow will be better. And if it’s not, I can always throw myself off the top of Half Dome.
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