Sleeping Beauty Awakes

For the past two days I have done just about nothing but sleep. I have slept eleven hours a night, and then napped again during the day, long deep naps that felt like being under general anesthesia. Was it hantavirus from the mouse droppings at this house-clearing project (usually fatal)? Pernicious anemia? Chronic fatigue syndrome? Or some other mysterious wasting disease? Or was it just being plumb wore out from all my travails?

I hope it's the latter, and I hope I've now slept enough. Because this afternoon I have to give a talk at the Longmont Public Library, a variant of the talk on recent retellings of Sleeping Beauty that I gave as a participant in the fairytale symposium sponsored by the University Libraries last fall; we're now turning to the public outreach component of the program, with talks at two different local public libraries. So I've recast my academic/scholarly talk for a young audience.

And then tomorrow I work frantically on getting ready for the course in writing the middle-grade novel that I'll be teaching at the Workshop on Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers in Sandy, Utah, all next week. I have thirteen student manuscripts to read, and comment upon, and all my course materials to prepare.

So it's time for this particular sleeper, beautiful or otherwise, to rouse herself and reclaim her life. At least I slept only two days, instead of a hundred years. And I didn't need any prince to wake me, either, just a couple of real and earnest deadlines looming large before me.

Though I may have ONE more little nap when I return from the library today. And maybe ONE more little nap tomorrow....