I have been insanely unproductive for the past couple of weeks.

Here’s one reason why:

With R home for summer, I’m sleeping and working on the daybed in my office. It should be fine, really. I moved lots of my stuff into the office, so that I didn’t have to continually go back into my bedroom to get clean clothes or stuff from the bathroom. But the dogs all think that the natural state of affairs is that they be on the bed with me. That’s, in order, Macie at the bottom, Zelda in the middle, Bartleby at the top. And my toes, squashed up against the side of the bedframe.

Plus the way in and out of the house is through my office. So when R comes home late at night and C goes out walking Macie in the morning, I get to greet both ends of the day. I’ve never found a shortage of sleep all that helpful when it comes to feeling creative and productive.

And then there’s this:

The office floor started seeping water Wednesday night. It was in the middle of an impressively torrential downpour so I thought it was weather-related which was pretty horrifying. I guess I can be glad that it was actually a leak in the refrigerator water line that had been slowly spreading under the kitchen tile, under the kitchen laminate, finally showing up when it reached the dining room. But I’m going to be spending the rest of my summer living in chaos, I suspect, and chaos is a lot easier when you’re well-rested.

I’m trying to be very zen. I’m saying a lot of Buddhist prayers. May I be healthy. May I be safe. May I believe in myself.

Last week’s book launch was disappointing. I gave away hundreds of review copies in advance so the lack of sales wasn’t actually unexpected, but since the hundreds of review copies didn’t translate into dozens of reviews, it’s looking like that was a bad strategy. Well, and that people aren’t responding well to the book, I suppose. So it goes. I still like it and that counts for a lot.

Put it all together, though, and I’m in the crawl-into-bed, pull-the-covers-over-my-head stage. Or I would be, if I had a bed of my own to crawl into.

I have a real vacation planned for next week: a road trip with R up to PA to visit relatives. But depending on how things go with the damage control guys over the next few days (who are currently drying out my kitchen with huge machines that are both noisy and heat-inducing, just what every Floridian wants to live with in midsummer), I don’t know whether I’ll be able to go or not.

Still, I remind myself, over and over again, that I’m having a better summer than other people I know. Joel, may you be happy. May you be safe. May you find hope. Barbara, may you be healthy. May you be strong. May you be comforted in your grief. Eric, may you find peace. May you find moments of joy. May you be comforted in your grief. It’s so sadly easy to think of people who need more prayers than I do.

One more prayer for me, though: may I sleep well tonight. And for you, too, just in case you need it as much as I do: may you sleep well tonight.