HATCH A PLAN

I hatch a plan to get my phone out of the bed. I have not slept more than 5 hours in months. I am grumpy and my brain no longer seems to work.

I start to talk about kicking the phone out of the bed. I am trying to build an argument. But people are less supportive than I hoped. Many shake their heads and say, but isn’t she the one who wakes you up in the morning? And also, what if someone texts you in the night? Like one of your teenagers, needing something? What if there’s an emergency?, concerned mothers coo.

All good questions. The phone stays in the bed. For reasons of safety and for the sake of good parenting.

PACKING LIST

Aspirational packing list: Sundress, sandals, beach hat, bathing suit. Pile of books. It is the books that makes the bag so heavy.

Actual packing list: Sundress, sandals, beach hat, bathing suit (not the little black Dior string bikini you wore in the South of France, the one with the tiny gold C and D dangling from the bikini bottom strings at your tan hips, but the big black one piece – the one that is neither high cut nor low cut nor cut-out), socks, underwear (cute ones and big, ugly period ones), bras (pretty ones, wide, stretchy exercise ones), pants, t-shirts, books (one beach read, one classic, one avant-garde thing you may try and discard if it doesn’t work), body cream, lip gloss, melatonin, Ambien, vitamins, sunblock, face creams (all 7 – the lifter, toner, the zit stick, etc.), toothpaste, dental floss, charged electric toothbrush, eyedrops, foot salves, emergency medical kit, feminine hygiene products, razor, rain gear, hiking gear, sex things, dog things, hair things (hair cleaners, holders, de-frizzers, tweezers), house keys, magazines, print-outs of work projects, airplane snacks, photo ID.

Also: Laptop and laptop charger, iPad and iPhone and iPad and iPhone chargers, the little white thing that connects the phone to the headphones, oh, headphones, the thing for the car that cradles the phone, the iPad keyboard charger adapter, movies downloaded for the plane, ebooks downloaded for walking, podcast list, Amazon password, bank password, Netflix password, Google account password.

ONE THING I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT

I’ve been invited to a holiday party in which the hostess has asked guests to bring “one thing you cannot live without” for a gift exchange. As I see it, my options are:

My computer

My smartphone

My tablet

My kids

My dog

My Amazon Prime account Netflix

1stDibs.com

My news feed

Instagram

Vodka and tonic

CBD oil

Meditation

Solitude

Lavazza coffee

Special carpal tunnel mousepad

I see quickly that I cannot bring any of these items to the gift exchange and create a more acceptable list of things I cannot live without which includes:

The Old Man and the Sea by E. Hemmingway The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble

Ina Garten cookbook

Handmade Italian stationary

Pen

Ginger tea

Fuzzy slippers

A first kiss

Rainy days

Sunny days

Cloudy days

I look at the two lists. The second list has better gift exchange items on it. But the first list is the truth. The first list can be dated January 7, 2012 to now (date of market saturation of the iPhone to the present). List two is what I used to live for. You know, before.

I resolve to wrap up a cloudy day and gift it to anyone on this earth who might open it up and gaze with wonder at the underbelly of a cumulus cloud without wanting to take a photo of it, without ignoring it completely in exchange for scrolling through a thousand images of much better clouds than this measly holiday gift exchange one.