No, not on the edge as in excitement and fun. More on the edge of sleep about 24 hours a day. Never really awake, never really able to sleep well. Living with a baby, and the brain suffers.
So there we were, ready to get ready to dress up to go to the special reception to meet John and Teresa Heinz Kerry on their book tour. We had told our son, Jacob, that we were meeting John Kerry and he was excited. He has no idea who Kerry is, but he remembers meeting Bill Clinton and he LOVED that. So he was excited. "We are go-ing to meet John Ker-ry...going to take a TRAIN." Yeah, taking a train was also part of the excitement.
So we were all ready to meet Kerry.
Until I saw Michael Bouldin's diary [1] describing the very event we were about to go to...which actually happened yesterday.
D'oh! Only that is the polite version of what I said upon realizing I had gotten the day wrong.
Sleep deprevation is par for the course when you have a baby. And sleep deprevation is cumulative. It has been well over 2 years since I routinely got a good night's sleep and the cumulative effects show...memory declines, motivation declines. About the only thing that can get us to Manhattan in the evenings these days is Bill Clinton or John Kerry. I can assure you Hillary or Chuck wouldn't be enough to inspire us to make the trek and give up even a small amount of sleep.
Somewhere in the competing synaptic activity that is the juggling of work, politics, family and whatever else comes my way, I got the day wrong.
Ah, well, I am still reading the book and getting much from it, including an increasing sense that, much like my ancestors who first came to America, I have to work hard to make sure my son has a good life. Only in their case it was working hard to give one's children a better life than they had themselves. With what is going on now, and the denial that is so prevalent, now we are faced with working hard just to make sure our children don't have a significantly WORSE life than we have.
SO I broke my error to my wife, who is as sleep deprived as myself, so understands. Fortunately I caught her before she had to sacrifice any work time. We all can appreciate this because her work is climate related, so we all can benefit from what she and her co-workers do.
But then I picked up my son. How to break it to him that the legendary meeting with John Kerry had already happened.
"Daddy made a mistake. We were supposed to meet John Kerry yesterday, not today. We missed him."
Boy did I get strange looks from passerbys as I had to repeatedly explain this to my son. He got it right away, but at his age even when they get it they like to review it over and over.
"Daddy made a John Kerry mistake." That's what it evolved into. "Maybe see him to-morrow."
So we made our way home. When he met up with his older sister, who had no interest in meeting John Kerry, though her disgust at Bush knows no bounds, his version of the story got even better.
"Daddy scared away John Kerry." That's what he told his sister.
And that's the story he's sticking to.
My life is far more intersting as a blogger and with a baby than it used to be. Never before could anyone even conceive of my scaring away John Kerry.
Glad Michael made it and blogged it. I promise a review of the book soon. And no more scaring away of John Kerry. Next time, should I get a next time, I will get the day right.
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