with apologies to T.M. Shine...

Typical day in my life this week:

• 4:00 am: neighbor's alarm goes off, dragging me from a deep sleep.
• 4:05 am: beep beep beep....
• 4:10 am: beep beep beep...
• 4:15 am: I'm outside, wandering through my apartment complex, looking for the alarm that has gone off for an hour every day at this time for a week, to the accompaniment of beep beep beep...
• 4:18 am: found the place. Of course no one is home. beep beep beep...
• 4:20 am: I'm back at the house searching for paper, pen and scotch tape. beep beep beep...
• 4:40 am: affix a note on the apartment door. Go home to the sound of beep beep beep...
• 5:00 am: beep beep be--...quiet. FINALLY.
• 5:30 am: still not asleep. Stomach is in queasy knots from tension and lack of sleep.
• 6:00 am: now the rest of the neigborhood starts getting up. beep beep be--. Car starting up. People talking outside my window. beep beep beep beep be--. There's a radio. There's a shower...
• 7:00 am: Well, there's the sunrise...
• 10:48 am: drag myself out of bed, after managing maybe 2 hours more sleep. I have a vague memory of being partially wakened by the phone, but there's no message so I disregard it.
• 11:30 am: phone rings. Again, I disregard it, figuring it's the usual telemarketer or wrong number.
• 12:05 pm: pick up the message from a half hour before. Surprise, it's the one call in a thousand that was actually for me. And both my calls this morning were from work. Guess who was supposed to come in early today? Oops.
• 1:00 pm - 6:45 pm: drag myself, exhausted, through a normal work day, which at this point essentially means babysitting teens after school until their parents deign to pick them up in the evening.
• 6:45 pm: taking a break on the balcony with my immediate supervisor, with whom I have a friendly work relationship. We're bitching about the ineffectiveness of a committee we have to work on.
• 6:46 pm: said supervisor's wife drives by in the parking lot and beckons him to come down. I return to my desk.
• 6:48 pm: said wife is now in my office space. "I want to tell you something, and you are going to listen. You are not going to speak to my husband again."
• 6:49 pm: Maybe you don't understand. I have to talk to him. He's my boss, and we have to work together.
• 6:49:30 pm: "but you are not going to talk to my husband again."
• 6:50 pm: whatever.
• 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm: learn waaaaay more about my supervisor's home life than I ever really wanted to know.
• 10:00 pm: get home, fall into bed, thinking about all the things I have to do but have no energy for. My house is a mess, my dance solo for Sunday unplanned, my Christmas party on Saturday night unprepared for, my sink is full of dishes...but I'm too tired to move.
• 10:30 pm: call Michael, who is still at work, and speculate about who smashed his car's rear window earlier in the week.
• 12 midnight: desperately tired but still can't sleep.
• 1 :00 am: ditto.
• 2:30 am: finally drift off.
• 4:00 am: beep beep beep...

oh well...

But here's the good news:

1. t minus six days and counting till I'm home in Edmonton.
2. Southwest Regional's Adopt-a-Family holiday project was a success. My co organizer and I collected over $400, and we were able to provide 2 toys from each child's wish list, new clothes for each of them, and gift certificates for the grocery store and Bath and Body Works (a store like the Body Shop) for the mother. We had a lot of fun collecting, shopping, and wrapping; hopefully the family will enjoy their gifts.
3. we're finally getting new security at work, to replace the old guy who was totally ineffectual and spent all his time reading the dictionary and compiling lists of people in the library he hated rather than keeping the kids in line.
4. I finally finished my Christmas shopping!
5. Did I mention I'm going home soon???