Thankful

I had my annual pre-holiday freakout last night. I always know I'm going to have one, I can just never predict when. You know the one, where I run around the house waving my hands in the air and going, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" until Bob makes me sit down, take a deep breath, and tell him everything I have to do, then rubs my back and makes me take a nap, and I wake up a few hours later in the middle of the night and do one of the big things on the list, which this time was writing 2,000 words of the book.

I've been making a lot of lists and trying to stay on top of everything, and doing a pretty good job, I thought. The freaking out last night was set off by my getting home and realizing that when I finish the novel on Friday, I wouldn't be able to make a pdf of it like I'd planned, because I don't have Adobe Acrobat here, just at the office. I thought, well, okay, no big deal, I'll just do it when we get back from vacation. Then I realized that my book wasn't the only reason I needed Acrobat--one of my clients (Sheila Viehl) is putting up a story collection for December in pdf form, and I still hadn't done the cover for it, which is why I hadn't made the pdf yet, and that one couldn't wait until I got back.

So instead of having the entire day Friday to pack, clean the house and finish the book, I was going to have to drive downtown to the office to use my computer there.

Then I remembered that Adobe has an online tool that lets you create pdfs online; I had signed up for an account awhile back, but never used the five free documents they allow you before you have to pay, so I can make both pdfs there. So that was good, but I was still in freak-out mode. I sat down and went through the list of things I have to do, and uploaded a bunch of stuff to temporary locations at the websites I maintain, ready to just get online and change filenames so the new stuff (mostly Christmas-y stuff) shows up.

Then I checked to be sure that everything I might need to work with next week was on a server somewhere that I could get to it, and I made the new blank BBEdit documents for that night's writing, then I went upstairs to apologize to Bob for being so crazy. That was when he worked his magic. He said, "So tell me everything you have to do," and I did, and he said, "Do you have to go to work on Friday?" and I said no, and he said, "Then you have nothing to worry about! You have all the time in the world!"

He said he would clean the house tomorrow, and he would pack his own stuff, and all I had to do was write and finish the book, and everything else would get done, like it always does. He told me to lie down for awhile, and I said I couldn't, that I had so much to do that I couldn't take a nap, but he rubbed my back and turned off the light, and I did, of course. I kept waking up and looking at the clock, but although it felt like I didn't really sleep, I'm sure I did. He said I did. I woke up at midnight, I think, and I felt pretty awake, so I got up and surfed around on the web until I woke up enough to write, and I wrote my 2,000 word quota and a little more, and went back to bed at 3:00 a.m.

The other thing Bob does, of course, is to make me laugh at myself, even when I don't want to. I kept saying things like, "I have to make salad for Thanksgiving tomorrow!" and he'd say, "Okay, that's a half hour, tops, what else?" and I'd say, "I have to wrap my mother's birthday present to take tomorrow!" and he'd say, "Five minutes, what else?" And I'd say, "I have to polish my toenails!" and he'd just look at me.

I had a dream last night that we were sitting on the beach and I realized that I'd forgotten to pack our prescription medication, and I was trying to figure out what to do, whether if I called my doctor she could get a prescription out to me somehow, and I woke up in a panic. This is the time of year when I start having my usual stress dreams--forgetting to pack things, getting lost, wandering around big hotels or apartment complexes, not being able to find my room. Just par for the course.

Bonne Marie, over at ChicKnits, wrote a list of things that she was thankful for; it wasn't until I reached "Xylophones" that I realized it was an alphabetical list, with one item for each letter. Seemed like a cool idea, so I thought I'd try it.

Angels
Bob
Cats
Diet Coke
Elephants
Family
Grapefruit
Holidays
Ice
Journaling
Kleenex
Life
Monk
NaNoWriMo
Orange juice
P3
Quarters
Red hair
Sweaters
Tea
Underwear
My Visor
Water
Xmas
Yarn
Zippers