Insomnia

This week I go back to the real world - my real job as a 2nd grade teacher. Yet, I'm still in the throes of book publishing here in my fantasy wish-I-could-do-this-full-time life. It's causing me so much overflow angst that my oldest son had to have his appendix removed last Saturday.

On top of that, I have insomnia. I lay awake mentally reviewing my book contract, and all of its intricacies, for If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny. I pre-worry that I will choke in interviews or that I will forget my best friends' names when they ask me to personalize copies of my book . I think about my classroom and my new students and whether or not I can prepare in time for the first day of school. I hope that I won't forget to show up for the first day of school like I did in a dream back when I could sleep.

From there I ruminate on grease fires in the kitchen, and escape routes from my house, and how many of my sleeping children I can carry out a window at one time. I fear I've lost the nail clippers, again, and that my toenails will grow long and gnarly and I'll end up in the Guines Book of World Records for an embarassing hygiene problem. I rehearse my Parents' Night speech. I think about my checking account. I chew on ideas for my newspaper column that I will never remember in the morning.

Driven mad by my own musings, seeking a way to stop the thoughts from coursing through my brain at bullet train speeds, hoping to find relief, I decide to pray. I start out well enough, asking for help with my anxiety, requesting assistance with achieving balance in my life, pleading to be soon lost in sleep. Thanksgiving for a thousand enumerated things follows: my children, my husband, my house, my car, my dogs, my cat, the fish, the bird, flowers, rain, clouds, pillows, porch swings, parakeets, friends, my job, creativity, corkscrews, doormats, sofas, shag carpet, the color green, dice, my health, frozen pizza, ice cream, elevators, electricity, mice . . .

Before I know it, my mind wanders and I'm on a tangent, wondering if I left the rice open, or a door unlocked, or forgot to turn on the dishwasher, or if someone will try to break into my auto to get the dollar bill I may have left on the front passenger seat, or did I put the dollar in the pocket of my pants which are now in the washing machine, or did I put washing powder in with the clothes, or what if I trip on my husband's shoe on the way to the bathroom and fall and break my ankle in the middle of the night, or if I set the alarm.

But, oh yes, praying. God bless the insomniac. Amen.

What will the children want to be for Halloween? I bet there are no hair appointments available at the salon next week. I should check my eyebrows in the morning . . .

A Book and its Cover

I never knew how difficult and complicated getting a book published could be. I thought I would land a publisher and wha-la have If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny out in print. But there's so much more to it. Like getting a decent book cover, for example.

The other day I met with the cover artist, Stan Mullins (http://www.stanmullins.com/), to wrap up the details of the cover art. As vanity would have it, I'm on the cover of my own book. So we had to discuss things like facial expressions, clothing selections, hand gestures, and very important technicalities like making sure he rendered me without any wrinkles - artistic license, you know.

Anyway, while we hashed things out, periodically he would leave and come back with an example of other work to help me understand the process and visualize the final product. In his absences I found my eyes wandering around his studio, the walls of which featured huge oil-painted canvases. One particular theme struck me as nearly universal - women's breasts.

There were probably paintings of lots of other things, but since I have a unique, but unintentional, habit of finding reasons to feel uncomfortable, all I saw were breasts. So when he eventually got around to asking me about that particular aspect of my persona on paper, embarrassingly, all the blood rushed to my face. I have no idea what he thought I was thinking, but he remained professional and plugged along at the task.

"Do you want them to be full, large, petite, what?"

Inadvertently my gaze shifted to the walls, sifting through the options like thumbing through a catalogue in a plastic surgeon's office, and I found myself thinking, "Well, hers are nice. Or those over there could be good."

In the end, I stupidly stammered, "No artistic license. As is." Flat as the paper they're on.