the deadline dash

I finally got to sleep last night about 3 o’clock after finishing an essay for two contests with deadlines set for today, March 15th.    Believe it or not, the long night was less a result of procrastination, and more the result of genuinely having too much to do.  I was waking up every morning early and making steady progress on the project and then last weekend stuff just started piling up.  Between taking care of Callan and Melissa and trying to get to work there hasn’t been a lot of time for writing.  However, with the deadlines approaching, I had little choice but to call upon my ‘all-nighter’ skills from high school, and I sure needed them.  

I got home from work last night at 8:10 pm and after feeding myself and Callan, cleaning the house, and putting both Melissa and Callan to bed, I sat down at the computer.  I started typing at 10:35pm, and as usual things started out slow.  Writing is decidedly not like riding a bike.  It’s more like lifting weights.  If you’re out of practice, it’s really difficult to perform at your peak, and even when you’re keeping a regular routine, there’s still a lot of sweat and stink involved.  

By eleven o’clock, I’d completed several thorough reads and had a fairly good idea of where I wanted things to go, and by one thirty I was working on the concluding paragraph.  The writing session took me to an article in the Pittsburg post gazette, to the Creative Writing department website at University of Arizona, to an online anthology of Oscar Wilde’s work, and of course to the Wikipedia article about Michael De Montaigne.  

At 2:30 am I called Grandma Franklin in Las Vegas to notify her that I was once again sending her a last minute draft for editing.  Then I addressed two envelopes, one to the Bellingham Review and one to the Florida Review, both of which have fairly lucrative (and not coincidentally fairly prestigious) writing contests, and finally went to bed.

At 7:15 Callan woke up and made a b-line for the refrigerator, which meant I was up too and right behind him (for good reason too, the last time I laid in bed while he got up to get something out of the fridge, I ended up mopping an entire carton of milk up off the floor).   We had eggs for breakfast and then we both got dressed, said goodbye to Mom, and headed out the door for the bilingual kindergarten.  

The problem was that today I failed to remember that I was supposed to be in Takamatsu (one hour away) by 9:30AM to teach at a kindergarten and by the time I remembered it was 9:15 and we were just about to start the first lesson at MIA.  I called the school and moved the time back forty five minutes, Called Deron to see if he would mind taking Callan back home for me, and got back into my car and went to Takamatsu.  

I arrived at the kindergarten at 10:15, taught two half-hour lessons and then got back in my car and sped back to Marugame for my 12:15 class, stopping at McDonald’s on the way home for a couple of cheeseburgers.  

After Seiko’s lesson I came home and had just under an hour to read Grandma Franklin’s corrections and suggestions, finalize the essay, write a cover letter, and stuff the envelopes before leaving for my 2:30pm class back at MIA.  I was five minutes late, but managed to get everything finished at the house, sort of.  I forgot to bring my American check book and so I couldn’t write checks for the entrance fees for each contest.  I had to teach until 4:35 and only had twenty five minutes after the lesson to mail the letters before the post office closed.  There was no way to get home in time to make the postmark deadline.  Instead, I asked Deron’s wife to write two checks for me, which she did, and I mailed the two envelopes at 4:48 pm today.

I got home at five, had dinner with Melissa and Callan, and then taught two more classes from 6:30p to 8:10p.  Fatigue had set in by my last lesson and I was having more trouble than usual staying awake during the lesson (that’s a problem when you are the one who is supposed to be teaching).  My student even said, in English, ‘Joe is sleepy.’

Callan and I made a snack run to the grocery store at 8:45 and he went to bed shortly after we got home.  Melissa and I watched a little Japanese television (as if there were some other kind to watch here), and read a few verses from the Book of Mormon, and now she is off to bed.  I just finished a bowl of ‘choco pie’ rice cereal (like coca crispies) and the covers are calling my name.