THE BOYS OF MY YOUTH

I woke up somewhere north of 3 am with an amazing and severe headache; I lived and dreamed with it for awhile before I realized that I had it and took an Excedrin. Back to bed to wait for it to go away, but it continued, and it seemed cruel and unusual (to Steve) to turn on the light to read in bed, so I came into my office to finish The Boys of my Youth. Headache faded but was still there at 4, but another Excedrin took care of it. I'm still wide awake at 5 something having finished the book, which started out good, muddled through the middle and went out with a bang. I'll be crashing at some point today. My plan is to make it through the day and go to bed early-ish so that I can get on the day shift and off the afternoon shift. Sometimes a night like this throws me onto the night shift.

The Boys of my Youth by Jo Ann Beard - I loved Inzanesville. The Boys of my Youth is short stories, but it's more about best-friendship than it is about the boys. The boys are in there, but ultimately, they're the supporting cast to the girlfriends who understand you or pretend to understand you so that you'll understand or pretend to understand them back. Much of the glue that holds our best friendships together is talking about, dreaming about, obsessing about boys. Brenda, you are my Elizabeth, and when you read the last story, also titled The Boys of my Youth, you'll know why. It's also about Jo Ann herself, her love of dogs, her family, her sister, her mom, the cars, the music, the parties, and getting a book written. I love Jo Ann's voice, and as long as she wants to keep writing these stories about those times, I'll keep reading them.

Yesterday was the 10th Anniversary of September 11, 2001, and so a day of reflection and continued disbelief. I stayed in, Steve sailed all day, and then at 5:00 we met Linda and Dana and Nancy and Johan at the harbor for the sunset sail that Linda won at the Family Service Center benefit last spring. Jeanne contributed the food and drink, and the evening was memorable for conversation, friendship and nature in the form of the sun and the moon and the lake, that was like smooth glass.....

Just below these words, it says that I posted this at 3:15 am, which is not true. I've been up since 3:15, but I started writing around 5:30, and am just finishing up at 7:00 am. Why does it take an hour and a half to write something that you can read in two minutes? Because during the blog writing, I went through the 85 pictures I took last night, rotating and deleting, creating a post-card like email for Linda, Nancy and Jeanne with the best photos, then emailed Linda and Nancy separately with more photos, looked up stuff, emailed Linda and Nancy old blog posts about books we were talking about last night, including the one about that island in France that you could only get to when the tide was low until 1971, because it turns out that Nancy's son actually stayed on that island last summer. (What are the chances?) etc etc. Now the sun is up, and I'm starting to get tired. What did we do for insomnia before computers?