We stay up very very late

Getting through this workplace morning thanks to my second-favorite college CD.

(Ah....Counting Crows before the Shrek 2 theme song ...)

It is homestretch week round here.

The marathon is over, yes, and the legs are resting and healing.

(Walked down my 2 front steps this morning in less than 30 seconds! Hooray!)

Hands are busy, however. The marathon tech-week schedule of the musical Nine (opening Friday night at the Cambridge YMCA, y'all!) is only halfway finished. Which means that each night this week, after leaving a desk still piled with unfinished work from last week (and piling higher as I stop working to write this), it is off to Central Square for 3 hours of piano playing.

I'm not trying to have a pity party, but there is no room to sleep nor relax round here.

Last night I tried.

Escaped rehearsal at 10:55, bolting 2 blocks to the liquor store for a 6-pack of Sam in the 1 minute before the doors locked. Carried it back to Southie first on the train and then the 15-minute walk home. Opened the first bottle .... then got caught up eating cereal because I was so blasted hungry, then became enmeshed in the dance of sliding my laptop to all corners of the kitchen table to find the one spot where the wireless connection would NOT keep bugging out so I could finish downloading photos to attach to an e-mail I had meant to send to all my marathon supporters telling them about the race and thanking them .... and after 2 hours of this dance I had neither drank the beer nor written the marathon e-mail and had finished off the box of cereal and my eyeballs were so dry they stuck to my eyelids and when at 2:05 a.m. I lay under the covers they would not close and my heartbeat would not neutralize despite ujjayi breathing and the drone of the BBC World News anchor because, I gather, I could only think of how tired I was and how I would have to get up in 5 hours and start another day that looked exactly the same as the one I just unsuccessfully finished.

Oh, thank God this is the homestretch.

And thank God for Dunkin' Donuts Turbo Ice.

And, for "August and Everything After."

(Everything hopefully including unfettered, unaching, unstressed sleep.....)