Saturday, June 2, 2018
Goal for the day: Stay awake until 8:00 p.m. without taking a nap.
We arrived in Dublin at 8:00 a.m., which is midnight Arizona time. I didn’t sleep on the plane this time, so I was worried about driving from the airport to Athlone. In some past years, I’ve had to pull off and take a nap, but this year I was fine. I got a very large coffee drink about half way and that did the trick.
The key to getting past jetlag quicker is to not nap on the first day, and to stay awake to as close to normal bedtime as possible. So, Barry keeps us all moving. By the time I got to Athlone at noon, Barry had everybody sorted to their apartments. Once I got there, he had three of them bring me my bins from storage, and I got unpacked.
A great mystery is this: Why does it take so long to pack, but the unpacking can be accomplished in a flash? I had my whole apartment set up by 1:00 p.m. That was the time Barry had announced that we would all be walking to the Tesco in the Golden Island Shopping Center, 1.2 miles from our apartments in the Croi Oige (Young at Heart) Student Accommodations.
But having just rented an adorable white Kia Picanto, I did not walk to the Tesco. I drove over with one of the participants whose knee is bothering her. We did our shopping, hung around and visited with Barry and some of the other participants as they came and went with their bags, and then went back to the apartments and unloaded.
Only 4:00 p.m.
I made dinner, watched a little Netflix, went over and visited with Barry, called Mark on Skype. That took me to 7:00 p.m. and I gave up. I was in bed by 7:30 and asleep by 7:31.
I woke up about midnight completely disoriented, but other than that slept well and woke up early the next morning.
A few weeks ago, Mark found me this perfect Roz Chast cartoon in the New Yorker. I do often think that it is even more mysterious to wake up in my body every day than to find myself outside of it. So when I woke up disoriented in the night I thought of the cartoon and laughed.
Once again, here I am.
The picture at the top of the post is the view from my apartment window. The second picture is the entry to Barry’s apartment.
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