Up at six; in bed by eight," my sister told me. My sister had agreed to share her small apartment with me for half of my stay in Washington D.C. during my off-term. An act of sisterly love, to be sure; but sharing her small space meant also sharing her rigid schedule. After all, a one-room apartment with a closet, bathroom, and tiny kitchen isn't big enough for two people to keep separate hours.
I was shocked when I first heard about the new hours I would have to adopt while living with my sister. At school, I am notoriously known for being an early-to-bed type of girl. But even I don't hit the sheets till 11 p.m. at the earliest. Now I would have to be asleep before primetime TV started.
I anticipated that each night as my sister slept I would be reading under the sheets by flashlight until a normal bedtime hour came around. But after only a couple of days in Washington, I was fully converted to my sister's circadian rhythms. This was the drill: We got up at 6 a.m. and walked a mile to the gym (a far cry from rolling out my bed in Wheelock and jogging across the street to Kresge). The sun was up by the time I returned to the apartment, post-workout, with just enough time for a shower and some oatmeal before I started the walk to work.
When I later came back to the apartment at dinnertime, I entered the bedroom, which is also the living room, which is also the dining room, and sank down on the futon, which is also my bed, which is also the couch, which is also the dining room table. (I said it was a small apartment.) I had imagined using this off-term as a chance to explore my culinary interests, and I thought I would whip up grand concoctions each night, with, of course, a green vegetable accompanying every dinner and plenty of fruit throughout the day.
But by the time I got home, anything that required a stove, a cutting board, or more than five minutes of preparation, seemed a little too much labor. As for vegetables, a few baby carrots on my plate was the greatest extent I went to. With my oh-so-simple "dinner" in place, I headed back to the futon where my sister and I ate side by side while watching taped episodes of the previous night's TV (you miss a lot of television shows when you go to bed at eight).
Only an hour or so till bed time remained by the time we reached the end of ER and by this point, I was ready for some shut-eye. Towards the end of my stay with her, we started "staying up late" and turning the lights off at (gasp) nine; still, twice my grandparents called after we'd already been in bed for some time. "Oy," my grandmother said, "What are you girls doing asleep already?"
Not a very fulfilling existence in my book. And yet, this schedule doesn't seem as ridiculous as it did before I started this internship and realized how tiring a day at the office could be. Even those of my sister's friends who keep slightly more sane hours agree that during the workweek you can only fit so much into a day. Usually, this totals about four things: exercise, work, food, and sleep. "Abby," they preach to me, "this is the life of a worker. Get used to it."
But I don't want to get used to it.
After a few weeks as my sister's roommate, I moved in with someone else -- my dad. (He's down here for a month on business.) Suddenly, it is a whole different world. I still get up around six to hit the gym before work. But when I leave my office at 5:30, my day is far from over. I no longer have to worry about cooking, as we eat out almost every night. I've feasted on Lebanese, Indian, Japanese, Thai, and Ethiopian all in the past week--a most welcome change from the microwaved veggie burgers I lived off of in my sister's place.
After dinner, there's the "evening activity." Last week we went to the Kennedy Center two nights in a row. The week before, it was a Warhol exhibit one night, a foreign film (Kurdish) the next, and then a trip to Filene's Basement (we're not here solely for the culture, after all).
This is what I came to Washington for. But now my days seem too full; as soon as we return to our hotel room after the evening's doings, be it a play at Ford's Theatre or a reading at the Shakespeare Library, I rush for my pull-out sofa bed (a step up from the futon) and fall right to sleep. I know I am lucky to have such "problems;" and I am sure I can find a compromise between my sister's spartan days and my dad's frenetic pace. I just need some time to think about it -- before it's time for lights out.
