I'm not sure why. I slept strangely (this always happens when I decide it's time to wash the sheets late in the day and so I wash them and then I put them in the dryer and then I get really tired and decide to just go to sleep on the bare futon with my comforter and my naked pillows). Classes went pretty well, but by the time I was walking home, I felt ready to collapse. I puttered around a little bit when I got back, decided I needed to eat, and just as I was putting water on for pasta, Kevin called. Did I want to go to Barnes & Noble with him? Well, mostly I just wanted to sleep, but it was eleven o'clock in the the morning, and we're not going to get much more time together at all before he leaves for Chicago, so I'm reluctant to give any of it up. So I said okay, but I needed to eat lunch, and did he have any noodles other than angelhair, 'cause that's all I had and it didn't go so well with the really hearty pasta sauce I made last night. He had rotini, bless him, and so he brought it over and we ate lunch and then we got in the car and went to Office Max where he advised me on printers (they had nothing useful) and I bought toner I needed and then we drove to B&N, by which point I was so tired that I decided to nap in the car for a while. So he went inside to start working and I'm sure all the nice people walking by wondered why this strange woman was stretched out asleep and probably drooling in the middle of the day in a hot car outside the B&N. I slept for a while and then woke up and sat up and unlocked the door and set off his car alarm. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Meep. I was still too sleepy to panic, so I just got out of the car and closed the door and went in and told him and he asked me what I'd done to his car, which seemed totally unfair to me at the time since I'm pretty sure he'd locked me in, but I think he was joking. He fixed it. After that I got some chai and a shortbread cookie and pulled out my book and settled down in a comfy chair near his table, and things got better.
I've been reading a lot lately. Finally got around to reading Iain Banks's The Use of Weapons and now understand why everyone likes it best of his. I'm kind of glad I read three others first, though, since I really enjoyed them and if I'd done it the other way around they might have been a disappointment. This one was really tight. I admire that. My own writing sometimes seems to droop and slither all over the darn place.
Today I read Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies. You may know it. It won the Pulitzer this year for short story collections. Argh. I really wanted to hate it. Or better yet, despise it. The back cover says all the things they ought to say about *my* book. (Which book? The one I'm still writing). Quotes from Tan and Mukherjee and Divakaruni. And it won the Pulitzer. Did I mention that? Not to mention that the title story won the O. Henry award and is in Best American Short Stories...sheesh. To add insult to injury, if one can trust the back cover photo, she's also beautiful. I really wanted to hate this book. But I couldn't. Because it really is very good indeed. Sigh...
I need to go eat some dinner now and then wade through a bit of e-mail, and I have writers' group tonight. Tomorrow will be another heavy work day, I think -- I have a feeling that this summer may be alternating heavy work days with heavy reading days. I could get used to that...
7:10. Just a note that on Friday, June 2nd, I'll be on Lovebytes with Bob Berkowitz on www.eyada.com at 9pm eastern time/7pm mountain time... Apparently people can e-mail the host at bobberkowitz@eyada.com or call in to speak with me at 1-877-eYada99 (392-3299). Cool, huh? I'll try to remind you guys closer to the time...