Help Wanted by Barbara Valentin

Author:Barbara Valentin [Valentin, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gemma Halliday Publishing
Published: 2015-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

"A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong." —Milton Berle

On the first Friday after cross-country season was over, just as it had each day since they moved in, the Gazette lay rolled in a tight, clear plastic bag on their front porch. Claire snatched it up, pulled out the Lifestyle section, and crammed it into her backpack as she made her way to the train. She left the rest, as usual, for Paul—although, she noticed lately, he never even took the paper out of its bag. Several were piled in a heap near the recycling bin.

And they wonder why print media is dying.

On her train ride home after a long day spent translating technical specifications into user-friendly prose, she settled into her seat and retrieved from her backpack the draft of the latest column she'd submitted to Dianne. Rereading it for the umpteenth time, Claire prayed to the god of second chances that the managing editor continued to like her work enough to offer her full-time employment.

"Dear Snoring in Suburbia, I hope you take comfort in the fact that you are not alone. Insomnia is a common affliction among plate spinners. Sleep is something I have a love/hate relationship with. I would just as soon end a sentence with a preposition as I would designate eight hours of my day to spend completely unconscious and drooling on my pillow. Yet the benefits of sleep are well documented and, I readily concede, so are the effects of sleep deprivation—kryptonite to any high-functioning plate spinner.

"Still, sleep and I have a checkered past.

"I don't remember being especially hard to rouse though. That was my older sister's department. On Christmas mornings, when our parents would declare that we couldn't open a single gift until she joined us, I always rose to the occasion. Armed with a squirt gun, I'd have her awake and happily tearing through presents in no time flat.

"These days, she'd likely enjoy the fact that I seem to be suffering from some cruel form of reverse insomnia. Falling asleep is a breeze. Like you, I just can't stay asleep. It brings out the worst in me and my grammar. While I've tried all sorts of ways to rectify the matter—everything from deep breathing to watching C-Span to reading my AP style manual—nothing works better than making a list.

"The act of transferring the 'to dos' swirling around in my head to paper relieves the burden entirely. The list, however, is never ending. Even at the end of my most productive days, a stray task will wake me up at 3:00 a.m., nagging at me to get up and write it down. Granted, I may not always be able to make out what I scribble down during the course of the night. It's not unusual for my family to find me, first thing in the morning, squinting at the piece of paper, trying to determine if I am supposed to 'buy garbage stickers' or 'bag gorilla slickers.'

"Choosing to not be

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