Sleepless in NYC (and DC)

It's been a crazy couple of weeks.

I've slept literally about 24 hours max over the entire period, finishing articles and flat-hunting and errand-running and baby-feeding (my sister's!) and freaking out. And waking up after two hours' sleep and freaking out some more.

And bingeing, there was plenty of that too. Four days' worth. In a row. And – I know I say this every time I binge lately – in terms of severity, worse than any I remember. It started on Thursday night. I'd just arrived in the US at a conference I needed to attend after staying up all night Wednesday packing – and after having arrived back in London just a few hours before after a nerve-wracking drive across France to the Marseilles airport.

I was about to hit the gym to perk up a bit, then realized I probably ought to attend the conference event since that's (part of) what the magazine paying for my ticket expected me to do. I ignored the canapes, which I usually can do pretty easily, but had a couple of drinks. The next thing I knew I was agreeing to attend a dinner for magazine staffers (I thought I should be social) – eating a gigantic hamburger and fries and corn bread and heaven knows what else, and then bingeing on (get this) the handfuls of Clif bars I'd been given (Clif was one of the conference sponsors) and the chocolate that was in my welcome pack.

I woke up exhausted and bloated and embarrassed (it was a semi-public binge), managed to eat acceptably all day (and even to ignore the dessert buffet at lunch), but then went seriously crazy at night (the party was full of soul food: macaroni and cheese, truffled grits, braised short ribs, bread pudding with sauce, s'mores chocolates...). By Saturday night, the black tie event, I struggled to zip my dress. Ugh. Of course, that didn't stop me from eating not one, not two, but THREE servings of a not-particularly-good dense chocolate hazelnut cake. (I was ping-ponging between three tables – one with magazine staff, one with a cute but very cheap Jewish entrepreneur [more on that later], and one with the subject of a story I wrote years ago when I lived in Washington DC.)

On to (finally) meet my nephews and attend the bris, all of which made me surprisingly – and very – emotional. (Then again, I'm slightly overwrought at the moment anyway.) I cried nearly constantly throughout the bris (despite what was being done to the poor things, only one of the babies did!) And afterwards, I ate. And ate. And ate. Macaroni and cheese, noodle pudding, rugelach, cheese, a bagel, oatmeal cookies...

Then somehow, Sunday night at dinner, I stopped. I'm not sure how, since once I start bingeing when I travel I rarely (if ever) have broken the cycle until I get home. And it can be tough to stop eating after a daytime binge._And_ I was sharing a hotel room with my grandmother and her aide – I don't generally do very well with zero personal space.

My flight back to London is about to board, so I'll skip the list of other challenges for the moment (and how close I came to bingeing again on Thursday night) and just say: I'm freaked out about my job (I was greeted at lunch with my boss with a schedule that dictates what nights I shouldn't make plans because I'll be stuck in the office, closing the magazine), I'm freaked out about the logistics of moving, and I fear I won't get a decent night's sleep until November. I did find an apartment (but because of some dawdling on the part of my dad – long story – and because the owners are religious Jews, I couldn't sign the lease before I left and yet have had to hand over my life savings, a promissory note to my first born child, and, I don't know, eleventeen pints of blood for it anyway. See 'I fear I won't get a decent night's sleep until November,' as before.) Anyway.

Signs you're not in London anymore: When I ordered tea with skim milk at the hotel, I was served a mug of tepid water, a tea bag, and an unopened pint carton of milk.

Also, one of the apartment brokers was laughing at me because I kept asking where the closest Tube was, and referred to the stove as "the cooker." Ah well – my boss says everyone in the office keeps asking when "that British girl you hired" (they mean me!) is starting...