Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 3 February 2005
First off, last night went from bad to worse. Recovering eldest daughter volunteers to take baby in for the night (she rarely falls asleep alone) and Vonne Mei returns the favor with some impressive projectile vomiting. One bed down, four still in play. So I repair Em's bed, adding to the mountain of soiled bed stuff in the upstairs' hallway. Em back to bed and Mom takes baby.
Meanwhile, I take pup out. Bailey is now exactly twice as big as when we got him, up from 7.5lbs to 15 solid. He used to grunt when we picked him up to carry him outside, now I grunt and frankly, there's getting to be no need to help him up any stairs, etc., anymore.
I head up stairs with Bailey to put him in his kennel, when kaflooey! Vonne Mei strikes again. Now, two beds hit, three still pristine. Repair that bed. I take screaming Vonne Mei and get to spend two hours with her screaming and passing frightening amounts of gas that sound like someone just shot a Zeppelin or something. At 1 am she finally crashes, as I wrap her in blanket.
Good move. About 3 am I hear this almost crashing wave sound and I pop up out of bed instinctively, almost knocking Mei off the side and scaring poor Kev, who's sleeping with me because he's a healthy refugee like myself. Turns out the scary flushing sound was Mei blowing not her top but her bottom. Talk about a hazmat disaster site.
I reconstruct her, throwing the blanket on the hallway pile, get another blanket, wrap her again and doze off. 30 minutes later Kevin is complaining about stomach cramps. Hmmm. I take it under advisement.
Then Kev wakes me at 4am. "Dad!" he says in that rising voice sort of way that signals imminent threat. I immediately pivot off the bed, race to the garbage container, flip off the lid, pull out the bag and race around the length of the king size bed. Smart dad that I am, I have the can already tilted in Kevin's direction. I catch the blast from a good four feet away, like most Packer receivers catch Brett Favre's passes: it was either catch it or things get painful. Now it's three beds down, two still pristine, so to speak.
This is a major reconstruction, cause it's a king. Once done, Kev and Vonne Mei are all resettled and I settle in for a good 30 seconds or so and then Bailey does his early morning yelp that says, "Three minutes and it's gonna get bad!" So I pop up again, get dressed, grab the dog and do the pre-dawn check of the yard. Coming back in, I move some laundry on the machines, and then get an undisturbed 90 minutes of sleep.
Then I started my second-to-last workday.
Only scheduled event was lunch with my department at local brewery. Very nice and somewhat sad. They gave me an author's box, or a black leather box with fitted top that is designed for holding loose papers of a manuscript. Nice Ralph Waldo Emerson quote embossed on cover: "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead here there is no path . . . and leave a trail."
Later in afternoon I do perform a live, 5-minute interview over the phone on CNN Turkey. Kind of weird because as I was waiting for it to start, I listened to the program and it was all in Turkish (go figure!) and I was beginning to get scared, worried that a translation voice-over would be live as well, and I know how cross-talk over the mike can be very discombobulating to an interview, so I steeled myself for the possibility.
But no, all of a sudden the host (female) is speaking English and introducing me and PNM. Standard start question: explain Core and Gap and Turkey's role. Feel I nail that one pretty well. Second question: what make I of references in State of Union to Iran and Syria. Make short bid to say what I think Bush meant and then did what comes natural to me, gave my preferred version instead. That went pretty well too.
In all, I was very pleased because my head was so into writing that for me to pause and perform like that was dangerous. Now, I can't wait to see the Turkish edition! I already have email interview questions in my email account that I need to get to tomorrow from actual translator of book, who's asking on behalf of big magazine there called Tempo.
Tonight I write late into the evening. Feels pretty good. Stop at 7,500 words on section on transition points for how countries move from Gap to Core. Harder to write than I thought. I work to keep it readable, so no plethora of stats or anything. I write these rather much like the way I used Gladwell's Tipping Point concept in the various reports I wrote on the New Rule Sets Project workshops at World Trade Center One (and yes, I am still amazed I will never visit that place again). But I poop out at 9:30 and do a conference call with my NRSP colleagues, my new crew.
Hopefully they won't have to buy me any parting gift for quite some time.
Get nice email from my brother-in-law Steve who is Mark's and my proxy reader for the raw text. He gives, as always, very detailed commentary para by para for section 5 of 18. In his mind, this is the best section yet and he really liked it. It was my big lessons learned piece on Iraq. His feedback made me feel very good, because it tracked with my own sense that I was starting to hit my stride with section 5. Plus, I need some kind words right now because I'm getting enough screwy sort of emails on both the Wired and Esquire articles. Frankly, a bit disappointed so far with quality of emails from Wired readers, although serious lawyer effort from one blog intrigues me plenty. Sucker for lawyers, since both parents practiced. When this guy gets the heavier analysis out, I may repost and comment.
Tomorrow I've got to finish the chapter, order the new Mac online (meaning my webmaster better have his suggestions ready when I call him before noon), and prep the last section of Chapter 4 for Saturday writing. Sunday I write my article for the second Rule Set Reset newsletter, a serious think-through of all the tsunami clips I've accumulated. Seemed like a perfect subject for the newsletter.
So, unofficially 82k previous plus 7+ tonight gives me 89k total, but no print-out for the Author's Box tonight cause I only print when section done. So I go to bed feeling a bit defeated, but able to keep my disappointment from flying out of my mouth.
And that's pretty good.
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