My father yesterday hopped on a plane and came down for a few days to help me as I slowly, so very slowly, begin recovering from WhateverthehellvirusfromSatan’slaboratory which has knocked me around for over a week.
This was a lovely gesture, and I thank him dearly; however the day so far, whenever I try to escape back to bed for a bit of rest, has been punctuated with loud exclamations from the rest of the house of, “Where’s MUMMY?” “I want MUM” “Mum – where are you?”
The last spoken bleatingly by my son, who wanders sadly around the house while doing so.
So I type here as I listen and I can’t help but be reminded of a fantasy I occasionally allow myself: that I just escape, for the night, check into a nice hotel, by myself, and sit in a room and sleep in a bed and do whatever I like, in whatever sequence, until the following morning.
We all have, I think, had these fantasies of being your own being in a new, luxuriously tangible space – that is, until, you’re actually in the hotel (for other familial or business reasons) and you hop in the bed and the alarm suddenly goes off, or you can’t get comfortable, or a tap drips in the bathroom, or you just end up staring at a cheap print on the opposite wall for several hours because you realise your supposed worth, or legitimacy, for such a treat is not only silly, it is precisely what every one else in the world is feeling and/or wanting.
Not to be depressing or anything.
At the end of this week, there’s a big BlogHer conference happening in San Francisco and I was desperate to go. I keep reading posts and endless Twitters on the subject. I also then leave messages on some blogs I get the chance to comment on how, “I wish I was going. See you next year!”
[“I’m going to go to next year’s one,” I say to my husband.
“Oh, are you? And with what money?” he says archly back and that’s the end of that conversation.]
I’m not particularly shy or self-conscious person. I’m quiet, yes, but not the other things. So potentially meeting hundreds and hundreds of people doesn’t worry me usually but if I was going to the conference this year, I have the suspicion I wouldn’t get as much out of it as I’d like. Other concerns, back here at home, would be a distraction.
Like, for example, the mistake I discovered last week that $300 worth of posters I had printed up for the book were ruined because there was a spelling error. Expletives ran through my body like matrix code. So I have to make up new ones – sell stuff on ebay first to get the money – and then figure out how to ‘fix’ the rest, if possible. Which I did with a paper guillotine and some invisible tape, but to me all that screams out is one thing:
AMATEUR.
Sure, that’s fine. I wouldn’t care, normally.
Except at the moment I am Tired. Really Tired.
