Thursday was production day at the newspaper, which is normally a long day. But this week was a holiday newspaper (Memorial Day) and my editor was on vacation.
That means it was up to me to put together the newspaper and have it at the printer at 8 a.m. on Friday morning.
I did it with a lot of help from some lovely ladies in the West Branch office. I left the newspaper office on Friday morning at 5 a.m. Remember I woke up at 3:30 a.m. Thursday morning. I was awake for more than 24 hours.
There were times during the day I didn’t think I’d get it done in time. But it didn’t happen often because I didn’t have time to worry.
Although there was this one time a very nice lady came into the office and wanted to talk about us doing a new business story, but she didn’t just come out and say that. She gave the background. A very long background. And I had a hard time concentrating because I was thinking of all I had to do and she still hadn’t told me what she wanted.
So I interupted her. I asked for her phone number and let her know we’d be contacting her.
“You don’t seem to feel this is a good article idea,” she said, or something like that.
So I explained that I didn’t mean to appear as if I was putting her off. It was production day and I didn’t have time to do a story right that moment, but I’d be glad to contact her next week. In the meantime, I had to get back to work.
She said she could feel it when she walked in the door. The stress, tension, whatever. And that was before noon. I can’t imagine the vibes coming off me at about 1 a.m. or so. By 4 a.m. I was feeling very tired.
Still, I think the newspaper turned out well. I haven’t seen the printed version, but it looked good to my 5 am. eyes.
I got home at about 5:15 a.m. and rolled into bed. At 6 a.m., Steve’s alarm went off. He wanted me to get up with him and the kids. It was the kids last day of school. I didn’t get up. I slept. And then Justin woke me up about 8 a.m. wondering if I was going to sleep all day. That was the plan.
He and I finally got dressed around 2 p.m. The rest of the weekend I’ve pretty much lounged around, although we did go to the races on Saturday and I have to write up the PR for that and get it out pronto.
Linda
