SHE WROTE: Middle of the Night Rambling

It's 2:30 and I can't sleep so I'm eating, which is not good because I'm in Hilton Head and the pajamas I packed shrunk in the wash and I'm straining the seams now. I'm sitting at a marble bar in a mansion on the ocean because Bob knows a guy who knows a guy who . . . Bob got us a mansion. My bedroom overlooks the ocean on one side. On the other side is a bathroom the size of the first house I owned. I'm up here all alone--the consultant is one floor down and Bob is somewhere on the ground floor, probably patroling the perimeter--with the ocean roaring behind me as I type at a green marble bar and eat all the food Bob stocked the fridge with for tomorrow. If he opens the fridge and says, "What happened to the food?" I'm going to say, "What food? There wasn't any food." His short term memory is shot, he'll believe me.

I flew in tonight on a plane that was smaller than that bathroom and Bob picked me up at the airport which was very nice of him because I could have taken the shuttle. We had our usual oblique conversations on the way back, Bob talking about Korean restaurants and me wondering about highway signs. I saw one that said, "Let 'em Live" and said, "What the hell?" and Bob said, "That's for construction crews." And I said, "In Ohio, they say, "My daddy works here" or "My mommy works here," which always tees me off because it's like "But if any of these constructions workers haven't reproduced, go ahead and hit 'em.' It's like those old Baby On Board signs. 'Don't hit me because I have a baby in the car, hit some childless person.'" And Bob said, "That's what those signs meant? I thought it was in case of accident, so rescuers would look in the car and find the baby."

That was a real He Said/She Said moment. Women look at those signs and think, "Protect the baby,"and men look at them and think, "Okay, there's a kid in there, let's get it out." I can see the penguins from Madagascar doing that. The head penguin always reminds me of Bob.

Where was I?

Right, in Hilton Head at 2:50 in the morning, trying to catch up on my e-mail since I've had One of Those Days and haven't been on top of things. So I wander over to the blog and see that Bob has posted three times. And to think that I once thought I'd be carrying this blog because he NEVER blogs. But here, he blogs. Which is a good thing, I'm happy about it, but i'm stunned. If he picks up the phone and starts calling me, I'm going to know he's an alien replicant. Oh, and it's going to be days yet on the contract. Possibly weeks. Standard procedure.

Maybe I'll play pool. There's a great pool table in the next room. And a mother of a flat screen TV on the wall. I brought the Veronica Mars first season DVDs for Bob; maybe we can watch the first episode on that. Everyone should see Veronica Mars.

I'm running out of things to eat. I've tried the potato chips, the ham and cheese, the trail mix, the IBC root beer, the cheese sticks . . .

So on the drive in, Bob keeps pointing out all the places in the book: "There's the drawbridge Stephanie drives over, there's the road where the climax of the book happens," except it's eleven o'clock at night and it's pitch dark outside. For all I know, alligators are out there doing a clog dance, but I'm nodding and going, "Oh, cool." as he says, "And that's where X dies." In the daylight it's going to be great. At night, not so much. So I obsessed on road signs instead.

I'm getting a little sick. And it's 3AM. So I'm going to brush my teeth in the marble bathroom and crawl into that football sized bed and listen to the ocean outside the window that's most of the wall in the bedroom.

That Bob. He got us a mansion. What a guy.