basketball diary

Sometimes I have to take a nap in the middle of the day, my transcription work makes my eyes so heavy; 15 or 20 minutes usually does the trick. I don't normally set an alarm.

I dreamt I had a heart attack. I was sitting in a room, in a circle with a group of six or eight people. There was a basketball. We were tossing it to one another. There were some rules: if you did it this way, you got a point, if you did it another way, you lost a turn. I threw it to some guy across the way and did a third thing that pissed him off... I think the ball missed him completely. I had to get out of my seat to retrieve it for him. When I turned my back to return to my seat, he hit me with the basketball so hard that it lodged in the curve of my neck. I said something like, "Well, I guess I got the point." And all of us in the group had a chuckle, which seemed to be at the angry guy's expense. I tossed the ball back to him, sat down but had to get up again because I couldn't catch my breath and my heart was racing. The room was a white box. The seats were tan folding chairs, the ball was orange. I pushed the silver bar to open the door and there was nighttime. The noise of opening the door woke me up. This is what it would be like to have a heart attack, I thought to myself.

I think:
I had just read an email from the moderator of the writing critique group before I lay down. One of the guys (a brand new guy) who was supposed to submit this week for next week's group (along with me and another woman) wrote in to say he didn't realize the group that week would fall on Halloween.

Obviously, the ball is very pumpkin-like. The guy in question is someone who annoyed me a bit at the first group he was at -- jumping in when I was making my critiques to suggest what I might be saying; I had to say, "Wait your turn," which got a little titter from everyone who (I think) seemed to be a bit annoyed by his pushiness his first time there as well. He had written his email a few days ago and there had been a few emails from other group members wondering what we were supposed to do (particularly, I thought, because the new guy said he could submit but wouldn't be there to receive his critique -- oh, we'd be honored to critique your work in your absence!).

The email I read before my nap from the moderator said, "We haven't heard feedback from J yet" (on whether we should go ahead or cancel the group that week). I wrote back and said I don't care either way, though I really hope they do cancel, because I'd love to have an extra week to work on the chapter I was gonna submit because after having gotten an editor going-over from S1 found out that it needs some work!