Sleepless night and being a bundle of nerves

My book is about to come out and so I have spent the past week fretting so much, I thought I was about to have a nervous breakdown. I seem to spend my entire time looking at it on Amazon. This is a bad idea. Sometimes it is at 3,000th in the best seller list which seems bad enough but, in retrospect, is not so awful as when I logged on the day after it had plummeted to 27,000th. One day it was 4,449th and then, by midday, it was 80,000th. I don’t know what any of this really means. All I know is that other books I have looked at in a similar ilk are things like 137th and 809th which seem a million miles higher than mine.

And so, and so ...I have become a nightmare to live with. If I am not obsessively looking at Amazon, then I am obsessively exercising. If I can’t control the book buying public, at least I can control my own weight/body or whatever it is I am trying in vain to exert control over. I did think about trying to control my children for a while but soon realised I was on a hide in to nothing. They are uncontrollable. I like them like that so this is not a complaint.

Instead of exerting influence over them I am, instead, exerting influence over my body. I get up at 6.30am and grab my poor sleepy dog and drag her out on runs. I actually hate running. It takes up too much time (but les time than walking obviously) and it makes my legs hurt. Consequently I do all sorts of quirky things to avoid doing it. For a start, I don’t run up hills which is a bit odd as I live in a place that is surrounded by hills.

I also only ever do the same circuit. I walk up the long hill, run across the top, jog down the other side, walk up another hill and then jog and walk home. I only run in places I like. As soon as I break in to a sweat, I stop running and walk. Like I said, I am lazy. But it does set me up for the day and the dog gets walked.

The downside is having to get up so early. I don’t want to get up this early. I want to lie in bed until the heady heights of 7.30am but, by then, all the children need breakfast and packed lunches need making and uniforms need finding. Yesterday morning, my husband was working the late shift. I got up and set off on my mad running and, when I got back, I found him kitted out like a Ninja.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Going for a run,’ he said airily.

I nearly punched him.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to run today?’ I asked him tetchily. ‘Then you could’ve taken the dog and I could’ve stayed in bed.’
‘But I thought you liked going out at that time of day,’ he said. He looked totally baffled.

By the time he got back that night, I was a bit drunk. Now I barely touch alcohol, I get drunk virtually on one whiff of wine. Last night I had three if not four FULL GLASSES of white wine with my friends R and K and it all felt very good although I did end up boring on about the virtues of hallucinogenic drugs (none of which I have ever taken much of and certainly not for the best past of the last two decades) so I really must’ve been far gone. My poor husband came in just as R and K were leaving.
‘How are you?’ he asked me.

‘I’m drunk,’ I said and then I went in to a mad rant about how cross I was that he thought I actually wanted to get up at 6.30am.

‘Has it not occurred to you that I only get up at some stupid time in the morning because I am RESPONSIBLE!’ I said.

‘You think I’m not responsible?’ He said, looking hurt.

‘Well, do YOU think about walking the dog,’ I ranted.

This morning, he got up at 6.30am as I cowered under the sheets. I apologised to him over breakfast.
‘I’m tense about the book,’ I said. He gave me a hug.
‘Of course you are,’ he said and then he escaped before I could bore him senseless about how, short of carrying every member of the British public to a bookshop, or any shop that stocks books really, and making them buy my book, I had no power over whether it sells or not.

I then turned on the computer to find a lovely e-mail from my friend saying she wanted to take me out for lunch to celebrate the book coming out.
I e-mailed back that I would rather pour a vat of boiling oil over myself.

INTERESTING THING OF NOTE – my youngest son, who is completely mad, caused an ‘incident’ at his school yesterday. Apparently he saw a French-speaking witch in his classroom yesterday – he knew she was French because she said ‘bonjour’ to him – and he was so convinced by this witch and talked to his little reception friends so convincingly about her, none of them would go back in to the classroom until the teacher had checked everywhere.

I was told about this and when I went to pick my boys up, my little one said, ‘there are such things as witches aren’t there?’ in a small worried voice. I didn’t really know what to say. On the one hand, I remember quite clearly seeing a warlock standing outside my bathroom window as a child. I was utterly convinced by it and nothing my mother said would make me change my mind. So, for me, that warlock existed.

For my son, the witch was real so, in that way, the answer would be ‘yes there are witches’… wouldn’t it?

This post was written by  Lucy Cavendish, a journalist and author of Samantha Smythe's Modern Family Journal. Her new book, Lost and Found, is due out in March. She lives in the Thames Valley with her husband Michael and their four children. You can keep up with Lucy at Samantha Smythe's Modern Family Blog.

Comments

[A Modern Mother]

Congratulations! I can't wait to read it. If it is anything like the last one I'm sure it is fab!

[Rosie Scribble]

Blimey you do sound stressed. I'm sure the book will sell brilliantly. I'd go out and celebrate if I were you!

[Kate]

Hi Lucy, we met at the Penguin party briefly - God I so relate to everything you say. My book comes out on may 7th and I'm not sure whether to have a huge party and celebrate or whether to cower at home and freak. Now you've given me the idea to check Amazon I'm sure I'll be doing that too. Damnxx Good luck with it