10

So yeah. I'm going to India. In 4 days. Holy shit.

The past five days have been absolutely insane. I hardly slept for four nights, and was finally able recuperate last night -- damn, sleep is a good thing. I haven't been updating here because stringing two sentences together was proving to be more than I could handle.

Highlights from the past week include:

1) A seven-hour wait at the Indian embassy, followed by a mini-revolution executed by 68 pissed off Frenchmen, one angry Brit, and a confused and frustrated American. The Indian solution? Everybody can just put their money and passports in an envelope and hand it over to the embassy personnel, in hopes of getting our visa requests processed. I'm very comfortable with giving them that sort of thing with no proof of said transaction whatsoever.

2) A calm-evening-turned-insane with the fomer bookstore quartet in which I thought we would eat dinner and go home around 11, but instead we stayed up until 4 am putting make-up on one another and having a photo shoot. Frighteningly enough, the boys looked better in the make-up than the girls did, and they were also the last to wash it off. I HAVE EVIDENCE.

3) A 7 am wake-up following the 4 am photo extravaganza

4) A 9 am meeting with the French authorities to request my working papers. After handing in my file, I realized I had given the nice lady at the desk my CV from 2005, which, naturally, did not include the job that I am requesting paperwork for. I zoomed back to my house, added my new job to my CV (since March 2006) and booked it back to her office. I said, "Hi, I just realized while organizing my paperwork that I hadn't given you the right CV..." because that sounds a lot more professional than, "Hi, I stayed out last night until 4 am playing dress-up and forgot to update my CV while I was reviewing it at 5 am. I know the spelling looks great, because of course I checked for that, but I'm sorta missing the most important piece of information..."

5) Renting "Finding Neverland" at 11 am and eating taco salad with Kathypath while getting teary-eyed.

6) Having dinner with my very pregnant friend, and spending a good 60-90 minutes looking at all the baby gear she's gotten in the last few weeks. ELEANOR, GET BACK IN YOUR TRUNK.

7) Thinking I would go to work for 2-3 hours but quickly discovering that it would be more like 6-7. Also, I apparently enjoy going to the post office and back several times in one day, preferably carrying heavy books. Bonus points for doing the whole thing on 2.5 hours of sleep.

8) Returning to the Indian embassy to pick up my visa, and being pleasantly surprised that the envelope method worked! Plus, I got hit on my some rich Indian dude, who wanted to pay a portion of my visa fee for me. He pulled out his wallet and everything...

9) Coming back to the casa and falling sleep after three days of exhaustion. Waking up and going out to dinner with The Boy and The Little Guy, feeling finally that all was right in the world after a good nap.

10) Playing endless rounds of "Flying Hamster" online with The Little Guy, and celebrating when we achieved a new high score. Also? Knowing The Boy was doing the dishes while we were playing. Tag-team parenting is for rock stars.

So between now and Wednesday I have to: fill out my prescriptions, get a shot, pick up my tickets, pick up a book or two, copy my Arabic stuff for the plane, finish EVERYTHING at work, hang out with The Little Guy and get some snuggle time in with The Boy.

I should try to pack sometime, too.