Friday miscellany: Forging on

I am not going to lie, this has not been an easy past few days. I had just been thinking, hey, it’s almost spring, and I have gotten through the winter without getting too sick! Then, bam. Wednesday late morning I started feeling queasy. By 4:30 p.m. I was down for the count in bed. My husband was out of town. G put the 4-year-old to bed before she left and then I sort of just provided vague guidance from my bed for the others. The good news is that they did eventually go to sleep, though it appears from the dishes left by the sofa that some sort of ice cream party may have happened.

I managed to sleep on and off from about 9:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. — about the amount I normally sleep if not the usual window — though it was unpleasant. My back hurt from trying to find a position that didn’t aggravate my stomach. In the morning, I lay in bed, and then on the couch for a while, until the 4-year-old got up and announced he wanted a computer turn. I pointed to the time and noted that it was not yet 6:00, when he is allowed out of his room. He shrugged. “I wanted to get up,” he said. This is a child for whom the color-changing clock does not work.

I managed to eat some cereal, and eventually feel more human. Which is good, because it turns out that Wednesday mid-day was, logistically, the only time I could have gotten sick this week. I gave a talk out in New Jersey on Tuesday night. Sarah and I recorded two podcast episodes during her half-day off on Wednesday morning. I was on a flight to California at 3:35 p.m. Thursday, semi-recovered if groggy, to tape a segment about Juliet’s School of Possibilities for a March 11th show (more on all that soon). I read Walkable City on the flight, and it made the flight pass relatively quickly.

So I am posting this from Los Angeles. I marveled at modern technology; I managed to run a video meeting from my hotel room this morning. I also slept like a baby. I went out on my hotel balcony last night and then for some reason couldn’t get the door back completely sealed, so there’s been a draft, but this is California in early spring, so it’s pleasant, and under my nice down comforter, I went to dreamland for 9 straight hours. Being in Pacific time, this also meant I was up at 6 a.m. here. I do love flying to the west coast for that. I can be a morning person and feel completely rested! And boy, after Wednesday, it feels miraculous to feel good again.

Speaking of mornings…If you get my monthly newsletter, you saw the announcement about my new every-weekday podcast, Before Breakfast! It launches March 18th from iHeartMedia. Start your morning with a bite-sized productivity tip that will help you take your day from great to awesome. You can subscribe on iTunes (and listen to the trailer). Bless you, bless you to the lovely people who have already reviewed and rated the trailer. And for Best of Both Worlds fans, don’t worry. That podcast isn’t going anywhere. Sarah and I are definitely continuing.

This weekend features the Cub Scouts pinewood derby. The 9-year-old will be officially competing, and the 11-year-old and 7-year-old are both competing in the friends-and-family division. Wish us luck. I hope you have a great weekend!

In other news: Congrats to friend-of-the-blog Camille Pagán (see her interview with us here), whose new novel, I’m Fine and Neither Are You, is an Amazon First Reads selection this month. If you are a Prime member, you can download it for free this month (if you’re not, you can download it for a very discounted price). Then I hope you will go back and check out her other work!