Night owl.

Recently, I told a couple of colleagues that I was never in bed--Never!--before midnight. Except last night, when I went to bed with the profile of Barack Obama in the latest New Yorker, and the crossword puzzle from last Sunday's Times, and fell asleep before the episode of Becker I was sort of watching on TV was even close to over. As in, well before midnight.

There's too much going on, and I feel like the hypervigilant, super-alert impresario of all of it. Here's a partial list:

1. Grading
2. Project-for-hire that I said no to not once but twice, yet still I'm doing it, and trying to ignore the e-mails asking me where it all is
3. children working and looking for jobs
4. children finishing high school and finishing their school projects, films, making up absences, etc.
5. new baby in town
6. the house is a mess
7. Scotland family coming
8. mother's day
9. items I said I would handle and haven't for the writer's conference

I haven't really gotten enough sleep for years, except intermittently. For a long time, this seemed not only okay but kind of a point of pride. Only babies and whiners really slept eight hours a night. Now I'm tired, I need more sleep, but there's too much to do and the psychic load of it sits on my pillow and tickles my brain. Except last night, when none of it could keep me awake. Even when I barely opened my eyes to see the historian reaching over me to turn out the lights, I didn't wake up--just barely surfaced, then slipped back under.

Next week, come hell or high water, much of this will either be finished or will have taken care of itself. I think at that point I should renounce at least a little bit of the overwhelmingness of this life I've been leading, or the way I lead it, anyhow. I just wish I could start now. Or start last fall. You know, like retroactive retrenchment.