Go ahead. Push all the buttons at once.
I’m lying all curled up in a bed in a Hilton in Santa Rosa.
For the record, I’ve been lying in this bed for THREE HOURS.
For the record, it’s 9:36pm.
It’s been grand.
I literally cannot remember the last time I spent THREE HOURS — three reasonably day-lit, dinner-bath-and-bedtime-ish hours — doing so much of absolutely nothing. Besides watching the Oscars! Drinking wine! And doing an experimental “energizing Korean face mask” that my beauty-guru girlfriend gave me for Christmas!
I feel simultaneously giddy and terrible. Surely, somewhere in this world, there is laundry to be folded. And I am not folding it.
Because of the Hilton/wine/holed-up-in-bed situation.
My life right now…It makes no sense.
For the record, I am technically at a two-day conference. Meaning I am here, in the Santa Rosa Hilton, for work. In my real life I’m a non-profit philanthropy consultant (hello, elevator pitch), and in case you don’t know too much about non-profit philanthropy — or non-profit careers in general — they do not often involve overnights at the Hilton, Santa Rosa or otherwise. So this little getaway…well, it’s a real treat.
Santa Rosa is not far from San Francisco, so — for the record — I didn’t technically need to spend the night. But last week my husband and I agreed that I would not be home early enough on Sunday to really do much besides go straight to bed, and then I would have to get up insultingly early on Monday and skip my already insultingly early workout in order to make it to the 9am sessions, so I might as well just sleep here between the Sunday networking and the Monday learning and “take some time to myself”.
Fast-forward to today and as soon as the networking ended I gleefully jetted to my room and threw on my sweatpants, flipped on the TV, and jumped into bed. As it turns out, eight years into being a working mom I don’t know anymore what to do with time to myself besides put on a Korean face mask and watch the red carpet recap on E!.
That said, time to myself is a good idea because lately our world is topsy-turvy. Has been, actually, since about July. Don’t get me wrong: kids are healthy and safe and learning to read and losing teeth and all the things kids do. Husband is healthy and generally keeping me sane. But grown-up stuff has been coming in rapid-fire, and your Friendly Resident Control Freak is having trouble containing the chaos. The chaos will not be contained.
Ugh.
But here in the Hilton in Santa Rosa, there is no chaos. The air conditioner hums and the wine fridge blips on and and off and my face is all tingly from the mask (good thing? bad thing? we’ll know tomorrow!), and La La Land did NOT win Best Picture, which was CRAZY and I would have missed it completely if I were, say, lying on the floor of my kids’ room rubbing someone’s back in the dark.
My life right now makes no sense. But a good night’s sleep (and maybe three hours of doing nothing) makes sense, always.
Thank goodness for work.
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