Epilogue

Well, chipmunks, here we are. The end of the road. The final countdown. The cherry on top. You did great! I have one last acorn of wisdom to impart, and then you can gather your metaphorical keys, phones, and wallets and be on your merry way.

Here’s the thing: Life is messy. I know this, you know this. We’re not fooling ourselves thinking that one little let-me-help-you-help-yourself-help book is going to alter the very fabric of the universe. Even for me, an avid strategizer with hella focus and no trouble with commitment, shit happens.

And you might want to reserve a little time, energy, and money for that scenario, just in case.

Remember that house in the Caribbean? Well, it got built, it is marvelous, and my husband and I sold our apartment, decamped to the DR, and lived there blissfully for three months, giant spiders and all. We hosted friends and family, we walked the beach, we developed a house cocktail recipe (a Frozen Painkiller, in case you were wondering). We even named our lizards—among them Lizard Khalifa, Senator Elizardbeth Warren, and Jim Morrison. All was right with the world.

Then we came back to New York to settle some final business, in order to complete our goal of moving to the islands once and for all.

Then I had this book idea, and then I sold it to my publisher, and then it was due in ten weeks. No problem, I thought. I’ll just get my shit together and write it. I mean, two and a half months? That’s an eternity compared to last year’s deadline! Child’s play.

Except that last year I had an apartment to live in while I was writing my book. This year, I’d sold that apartment to pursue my dream of living on a tropical island, but circumstances demanded that I be off that island and within striking distance of things like “my husband’s clients” and “reliable mail services” for a few months, which happened to coincide with my writing time.

No problem, I thought, we’ll secure an apartment, I’ll set up my laptop and Diet Coke funnel, and I’ll be good to go!

Only, that little plan didn’t quite work out. We drifted like hipster gypsies from an Airbnb to friends’ places in Brooklyn and New Jersey, to my in-laws’ apartment, to my parents’ house in Maine (writing profanity-laced books from your childhood bedroom is one way to spend a summer). Rinse, lather, repeat. I dutifully unpacked and repacked our suitcases every few days, budgeted the increasingly onerous “moving days” into my writing schedule, and kept that word count squarely in my sights at all times.

But the mental clutter was slowly taking up residence in my brain the way my extra luggage was taking up space in my friend’s basement.

I tried to keep it contained. I did some deep breathing, indulged my new daily stretching habit wherever we happened to be, and prioritized “self-care” in the form of pizza and pedicures. I wrote and I packed, I wrote and I unpacked.

Finally, the end was nigh.

On the last leg of our Sleeping Around Summer of ’16 Tour, I booked another Airbnb that I thought was going to get me through the final stretch of deadline mania and my husband through the last of his business, after which we could ride off into some of the most gorgeous sunsets in the world as reward for jobs well done, and life won.

That’s when the shit hit the fan.

I do not wish to cast aspersions on the nice couple who sublet to us, but their apartment was not… to our liking. Some people can live in a perpetually damp, mildew-smelling space, with a cloud of fruit flies for polite company. I am not one of those people. The ceiling fans that we were instructed to “keep on at all times” (to combat the dampness, I assume) produced a buzz-clank noise that rapidly achieved Tell-Tale Heart status as I sat under them trying to finish this book. There was no coffeemaker. The final straw was a wiggly millipede thing that I found in the cabinet when I was looking for plastic wrap to create a trap for the fruit flies. If I’m going to live among multilegged fauna, I’m damn well doing it in a tropical oasis, not in a basement in Brooklyn.

I’d like to be able to tell you that I handled this situation with grace and aplomb. What actually happened was that I broke down and sobbed on the bed for half an hour while my husband booked a cheap room at a nice hotel on the Hotel Tonight app (bless you, Hotel Tonight app), instructed me to grab my toiletries and pajamas, and hustled us out of the rental sauna for a restorative night of sweet-smelling sheets and high-functioning AC, with a positively adorable mini-Keurig machine to help me greet the morning.

“We’ll deal with the fallout tomorrow,” he said. “For now, get some sleep.” Small, manageable chunks indeed.

Hallelujah, I thought. At least one of us has our shit together.

Then again, he might tell you he learned it by watching me.