Friday, April 20, 2007

Soooooo tired

Maria and I have been working nights - at least 3-11 p.m. and usually later - since she had to fire a flaky night copy editor in early January.
She also lost her prize-winning page designer in December and the 19-year-old kid she hired as a replacement is learning, but still needs supervision. Some weeks we work five nights, some weeks it's six. I have mixed feelings about it. I enjoy working with Maria and it's fun being back in newspapering on my own terms, but we're both desperately longing to get our evenings back.
I'm a morning person and this late-night stuff means I get to sleep around 2 a.m. or maybe even as late as 3 a.m. Pete the Aussie is also a morning dog and starts yarking in his kennel in the kitchen when the sky begins to get light around 6:30 a.m. That means one of us has to get up and let him and Ruthie out to do their doggy business in the back yard. If we're lucky, we can get back to sleep for another two or three hours. As often as not, I'm sufficiently wide awake by the time the dogs come back in that more sleep is out of the question.
Then there's the tricky midnight-or-later drive home. The 17 miles of twisty two-lane state highway that we drive from home to the office and back again is thick with deer. One night earlier this week, we counted nine deer strung out along the roadside. And for every deer we see, there are probably three or four nearby that escape our notice. I've had to jam on the brakes a couple of times when they dart across the highway, but mostly I just putt along at 45-50 mph with dashboard lights dimmed, scanning the road ahead.
Maria has hired a couple of new staff members, but they won't come aboard until early June, so we will probably have to soldier on for another six weeks or so.
I guess there isn't any point to this rambling post other than to say I'm very tired of giving up our nights and whatever social life we might have had and of having to run the deer gauntlet every night.
Anyone want a job as a page designer or a night copy editor at a medium-sized Indiana daily newspaper?

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