It's Friday I can't sleep
It's about 7 p.m. on a Friday night. Work starts in five and a half hours and I really need to sleep, but can't seem to calm down. So, for the edification of all who may care, here's
Food, shelter and a Honda Civic.
The three pillars of modern existence, yeah? Well, maybe not. But they definitely make the whole work/leisure/higher thought thing a lot easier to manage. Anyway, for what it's worth, about a week after we got into Seattle, Chris and I settled down in a nice place on Capitol Hill. It's a pretty rockin' neighborhood, and I'm growing to love it more the more I get to know it. Grocery stores are close, parking (for aforementioned Honda Civic, the first car since the Ass Pirate that I can really call my own) isn't bad and our apartment building has a really nice back deck that looks out over a garden. Not a bad deal. It made a nice place to come home to while enduring...
The Overnight Work Week of Doom
Since the first of June or so, I've been on this wacky-assed schedule that puts me at work from midnight to noon on Saturday and Sunday and 4 a.m.-noon on Monday and Tuesday. I love producing (well, at times... other times it makes me feel like committing seppuku in the middle of the newsroom, but I've felt that about just about any job I've ever held, so maybe that's just my natural reaction to work), but I seriously hate the hours.
Still, no matter how much it sucks going to bed at 3 p.m. on a sunny Friday afternoon (or trying to... emphasis on the trying)... and no matter how much it sucks going to work while everyone else in the world is out at the bars you pass on your way in, the weekend morning schedule is workable. Plenty of time to do stuff, plenty of room to make mistakes -- really, a good place for a fledgling producer to hone her craft.
Anyway, the week before the fourth of July, the weekday morning producer went on vacation... and I got called to fill in. It didn't seem so bad at first... but it was tough. I was stressed out, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat and basically came home and flipped shit every day. My body couldn't adjust; working that shift turned me into a crazy person. It all sort of came to a head about 3:30 a.m. on Monday, July 3, when, confronted with about six different show-related problems at once, I had this weird kind of breakdown, started shaking and couldn't get a damn sentence out for about five minutes. It didn't help that I hadn't slept at all the previous afternoon, owing mostly to the fact that my lovely neo-hippie neighbor had decided to practice his harmonica... in the backyard... for about six hours at a stretch. At the time, too, I was also in the early stages of...
The Allergic Reaction of Doom
I came home that Monday and passed out... woke up about 4 p.m. itching like crazy. I sat in bed and scratched my head for like 20 minutes... fully cognizant that I was probably doing a hell of a lot of harm to my scalp, but not really caring. I started to notice that my arms were itching, too... but I rubbed some Benadryl on and didn't think much of it. They had a few little welts on them, but nothing big. I figured it was just a stress-induced thing. No big deal.
Worked overnight that night... and scratched like hell alllllll night long. Cracked wise with the director and camera op during the shows that morning... "Yeah, man, I just gotta lay off the drugs... all those invisible bugs are coming back to haunt me." Laughs all around. I felt like ass, but figured that was just a side effect of having been up all night.
The welts had annexed more territory... as of 10 a.m. on the Fourth, they were all over my upper thighs and arms, and were starting to get all raised and weird looking. I was mildly freaked out, but managed to assuage my fear (and my dad's, who told me repeatedly to go to the doctor) and get home.
I walked in the front door... and that's when I felt them spreading.
I have yet to experience a physical sensation so frightening as I did in the moment I felt the Itching Welts of Hell racing up my stomach, back, arms and neck... raising up and itching as I stood in the mirror unsure of what to do. I felt like one of the Black Oil people on The X-Files... infected with something that was now taking over my veins and doing as it pleased.
I was not happy, and passed out on the couch.
I whiled away most of that afternoon in a haze of Benadryl and exhaustion. I had a fever, I sweated, I tossed and turned on the couch. After convincing Chris I wasn't going to die, he headed off to the beach for a family gathering, leaving me to my drugs and my welts. Chris came back, at some point, bearing baked beans and brownies. I tried to eat; bad idea. I drifted back into a Benadryl haze on the sofa, convinced that somehow, if I just slept enough, it would all go away.
Flash forward to about 1:30 a.m. I wake up, knowing I should go to bed, but take about 15 minutes to muster the energy to do so. Walking to the bathroom raises a whole bunch of those big, black blooming dots in my field of vision. Suddenly getting up, like eating, seems like a bad idea. I manage to wash my face... and notice purple welts... all. fucking. over.
This is getting serious.
Frightened, sick and drugged, I fall down on the bathroom floor, clattering the toilet lid, darkness blooming in front of my face. Oh shit, I think. This is how it ends. Dead at 22 of anaphylactic shock on the bathroom floor. I cry and bang on the toilet lid, hoping in vain that Chris will hear me, not sure what he could do even if he did. I think I black out for a minute, then get together enough to stumble into the bedroom, tearful and disgusting, and fall into bed. Chris gets up, gets me some water, calms me down, and I fade back into sleep.
I wake up the next morning feeling worlds better, but with hands the size of catcher's mitts. After conferencing once again with my dad (I still didn't want to go the hospital... even after all that had happened the night before. Why, God only knows.), I went to the emergency room. A very nice doctor gave me a very nice IV cocktail of steroids and antihistamines, and within 20 minutes, I was fine. The welts disappeared as quickly as they had come, and I trotted out of Swedish Hospital with a prescription for Prednisone and Zirtec and a new lease on life.
Ain't nothing like thinking you're going to die on your bathroom floor to make even the crappiest of work schedules seem fairly inconsequential.
Other Happenings
That's really been the major adventure of this summer. Since then, it's mostly been a steady cycle of work, sleep, repeat. I would kill to get on a better schedule right now... but... what can ya do?
Spending a lot of time at various beaches and lakes... getting a serious tan.
Reading a lot. Ian McEwan's Saturday now has the Allison Brown Seal of Approval.
I miss Louisville just as much as I thought I would. Being 2,000 miles from your family is hard. I thought doubling the distance from Boston wouldn't matter, but it does. A lot.
I miss Boston more than I ever anticipated. It's mostly the people, of course -- but I also miss the certain nuances of New England life, the smells and sights, the attitude, the whole ancient feel of the place -- that I really got used to over the last four years.
I miss having friends close at hand. College, in all of its summer camp-esque glory, had to end. But I'm jealous of everyone who stayed in Boston, who at least have a few hints of familiarity to hold on to during this whole messy transition. I make a lot of phone calls, send a lot of emails, but I miss being able to spend an hour or two cracking up with Cynthia, gossipping with Britt or talking random rap music with Kevin. Kellogg comes up to Seattle every so often from Yakima, which is awesome, but I still miss the proximity we all had in Boston.
Life goes on. New friends happen, eventually. New cities become familiar, and the past fades, along with a lot of the aching for it.
All right, I'm tired. Seattle life is mostly beer and Skittles, I suppose... with the occasional allergic reaction thrown in.
All for now, kids. Sleep well.
Food, shelter and a Honda Civic.
The three pillars of modern existence, yeah? Well, maybe not. But they definitely make the whole work/leisure/higher thought thing a lot easier to manage. Anyway, for what it's worth, about a week after we got into Seattle, Chris and I settled down in a nice place on Capitol Hill. It's a pretty rockin' neighborhood, and I'm growing to love it more the more I get to know it. Grocery stores are close, parking (for aforementioned Honda Civic, the first car since the Ass Pirate that I can really call my own) isn't bad and our apartment building has a really nice back deck that looks out over a garden. Not a bad deal. It made a nice place to come home to while enduring...
The Overnight Work Week of Doom
Since the first of June or so, I've been on this wacky-assed schedule that puts me at work from midnight to noon on Saturday and Sunday and 4 a.m.-noon on Monday and Tuesday. I love producing (well, at times... other times it makes me feel like committing seppuku in the middle of the newsroom, but I've felt that about just about any job I've ever held, so maybe that's just my natural reaction to work), but I seriously hate the hours.
Still, no matter how much it sucks going to bed at 3 p.m. on a sunny Friday afternoon (or trying to... emphasis on the trying)... and no matter how much it sucks going to work while everyone else in the world is out at the bars you pass on your way in, the weekend morning schedule is workable. Plenty of time to do stuff, plenty of room to make mistakes -- really, a good place for a fledgling producer to hone her craft.
Anyway, the week before the fourth of July, the weekday morning producer went on vacation... and I got called to fill in. It didn't seem so bad at first... but it was tough. I was stressed out, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat and basically came home and flipped shit every day. My body couldn't adjust; working that shift turned me into a crazy person. It all sort of came to a head about 3:30 a.m. on Monday, July 3, when, confronted with about six different show-related problems at once, I had this weird kind of breakdown, started shaking and couldn't get a damn sentence out for about five minutes. It didn't help that I hadn't slept at all the previous afternoon, owing mostly to the fact that my lovely neo-hippie neighbor had decided to practice his harmonica... in the backyard... for about six hours at a stretch. At the time, too, I was also in the early stages of...
The Allergic Reaction of Doom
I came home that Monday and passed out... woke up about 4 p.m. itching like crazy. I sat in bed and scratched my head for like 20 minutes... fully cognizant that I was probably doing a hell of a lot of harm to my scalp, but not really caring. I started to notice that my arms were itching, too... but I rubbed some Benadryl on and didn't think much of it. They had a few little welts on them, but nothing big. I figured it was just a stress-induced thing. No big deal.
Worked overnight that night... and scratched like hell alllllll night long. Cracked wise with the director and camera op during the shows that morning... "Yeah, man, I just gotta lay off the drugs... all those invisible bugs are coming back to haunt me." Laughs all around. I felt like ass, but figured that was just a side effect of having been up all night.
The welts had annexed more territory... as of 10 a.m. on the Fourth, they were all over my upper thighs and arms, and were starting to get all raised and weird looking. I was mildly freaked out, but managed to assuage my fear (and my dad's, who told me repeatedly to go to the doctor) and get home.
I walked in the front door... and that's when I felt them spreading.
I have yet to experience a physical sensation so frightening as I did in the moment I felt the Itching Welts of Hell racing up my stomach, back, arms and neck... raising up and itching as I stood in the mirror unsure of what to do. I felt like one of the Black Oil people on The X-Files... infected with something that was now taking over my veins and doing as it pleased.
I was not happy, and passed out on the couch.
I whiled away most of that afternoon in a haze of Benadryl and exhaustion. I had a fever, I sweated, I tossed and turned on the couch. After convincing Chris I wasn't going to die, he headed off to the beach for a family gathering, leaving me to my drugs and my welts. Chris came back, at some point, bearing baked beans and brownies. I tried to eat; bad idea. I drifted back into a Benadryl haze on the sofa, convinced that somehow, if I just slept enough, it would all go away.
Flash forward to about 1:30 a.m. I wake up, knowing I should go to bed, but take about 15 minutes to muster the energy to do so. Walking to the bathroom raises a whole bunch of those big, black blooming dots in my field of vision. Suddenly getting up, like eating, seems like a bad idea. I manage to wash my face... and notice purple welts... all. fucking. over.
This is getting serious.
Frightened, sick and drugged, I fall down on the bathroom floor, clattering the toilet lid, darkness blooming in front of my face. Oh shit, I think. This is how it ends. Dead at 22 of anaphylactic shock on the bathroom floor. I cry and bang on the toilet lid, hoping in vain that Chris will hear me, not sure what he could do even if he did. I think I black out for a minute, then get together enough to stumble into the bedroom, tearful and disgusting, and fall into bed. Chris gets up, gets me some water, calms me down, and I fade back into sleep.
I wake up the next morning feeling worlds better, but with hands the size of catcher's mitts. After conferencing once again with my dad (I still didn't want to go the hospital... even after all that had happened the night before. Why, God only knows.), I went to the emergency room. A very nice doctor gave me a very nice IV cocktail of steroids and antihistamines, and within 20 minutes, I was fine. The welts disappeared as quickly as they had come, and I trotted out of Swedish Hospital with a prescription for Prednisone and Zirtec and a new lease on life.
Ain't nothing like thinking you're going to die on your bathroom floor to make even the crappiest of work schedules seem fairly inconsequential.
Other Happenings
That's really been the major adventure of this summer. Since then, it's mostly been a steady cycle of work, sleep, repeat. I would kill to get on a better schedule right now... but... what can ya do?
Spending a lot of time at various beaches and lakes... getting a serious tan.
Reading a lot. Ian McEwan's Saturday now has the Allison Brown Seal of Approval.
I miss Louisville just as much as I thought I would. Being 2,000 miles from your family is hard. I thought doubling the distance from Boston wouldn't matter, but it does. A lot.
I miss Boston more than I ever anticipated. It's mostly the people, of course -- but I also miss the certain nuances of New England life, the smells and sights, the attitude, the whole ancient feel of the place -- that I really got used to over the last four years.
I miss having friends close at hand. College, in all of its summer camp-esque glory, had to end. But I'm jealous of everyone who stayed in Boston, who at least have a few hints of familiarity to hold on to during this whole messy transition. I make a lot of phone calls, send a lot of emails, but I miss being able to spend an hour or two cracking up with Cynthia, gossipping with Britt or talking random rap music with Kevin. Kellogg comes up to Seattle every so often from Yakima, which is awesome, but I still miss the proximity we all had in Boston.
Life goes on. New friends happen, eventually. New cities become familiar, and the past fades, along with a lot of the aching for it.
All right, I'm tired. Seattle life is mostly beer and Skittles, I suppose... with the occasional allergic reaction thrown in.
All for now, kids. Sleep well.