JET lag is the Major Irritant of the Week. Last night as I fell asleep I was planning to get up and write this at 4.30 in the morning. It sounded like a bright idea at the time. After all, when I fell asleep it was still light outside.

What a great masterpiece I could come up with, I thought, as the birds outside my window shrieked me to sleep (whatever birds there are in Brookline, Massachusetts, anyway). This seemed quite reasonable as I awoke at 4.30 a.m., the day before after we returned to the United States from a holiday in England.

Unfortunately, I overslept this morning and woke up at 6.01 a.m. instead. Oh well. Those are the breaks. It's probably better this way anyway. Yesterday, I felt like all my springs had sprung. That is why this morning I thought I'd write a column that is unfocused, slightly confusing and possibly dual themed, because that sums up the agonies of jet lag perfectly.

To jump themes in a jarring, but illustrative way, I'll start by saying I've never in my life been wide awake at 4.30 in the morning. Sure, people have hoisted me out of bed at that time and dragged me stumbling towards an airport, but I wasn't actually awake with my eyes fully open and my mind functioning semi-normally.

So I was relieved to find out that I haven't been missing much by getting up after sunrise. If you thought Sunday television was bad, it's even worse before sun-up. I discovered this once my addled brain remembered how to work the remote control again.

This wasn't so much the jet lag as the fact that I haven't needed a remote control for the past two weeks because I found British television a turn-off.

"There's good news," my husband said, "the restaurant down the street opens at 8 a.m. Only another three and a half hours until breakfast."

Normally we sleep through the eggs-and-bacon hour. Damn these restaurants and their 8 a.m. to noon breakfast hours. Breakfast should be all-day, everywhere.

Anyway, even though we did have a huge breakfast a minute after the restaurant opened, I was still ravenously hungry at 4.54 p.m. That would be nine something in England. We went to the Berkshire Grill for dinner (if you can call it dinner at that time of the day). By this time things were beginning to swim before my eyes. I was not in the mood for much of anything.

"I'll just have the baked stuffed shrimp," I told the waitress. I just want to say here that I only come to the Berkshire Grill because they offer baked stuffed shrimp and it's cheaper than the same dish at Legal Seafood.

As soon as I said this a strange look came over the waitress' face. She looked furtively around her. She leaned in and whispered: "Don't have that, it's terrible. They use graham crackers in it."

"Oh . . .," I said. My brain went into a kind of does-not-compute cycle for a moment. "Has the recipe changed? I've had that several times before and I liked it."

The waitress was totally thrown. "Oh, you've had it before," she said tossing back her hair. "Oh, well, uh . . . I've only been here for a short time. I don't know if they've changed the recipe. Yeah, come to think of it, maybe they did change it."

"Look, I think I'll just take my chances and have the baked stuffed shrimp," I said.

In a huff, she marched off with our orders.

"That was a case of honesty backfiring," my husband said. "I don't think she was expecting you to say you've had it before."

As I sat there waiting for my meal, anxiety overcame me. What had the waitress seen in the back kitchen? Maybe the cook didn't wash his hands properly or something. Maybe they really did use graham crackers. Maybe, what if . . . I was about to fall asleep in my cranberry juice when our food finally came. She put it down triumphantly in front of me with this look that said, 'Well, you asked for it.'

I was relieved to find that the baked stuffed shrimp looked and tasted pretty much as it always did. In fact, the cook had burned it a little less than normal this time. It was only blackened around the edges, and not so much all over (and it's still good even burned, so there!)

As I was finally eating my dinner, two girls walked by. One peered over at my dinner.

"I'm sorry, is that the baked stuffed shrimp?" she asked loudly. Possibly, because of my cross-eyed glare, she laughed nervously. "I'm sorry to interrupt your dinner, but it just looks so good. I think I'll have that."

"You'll have to fight the waitress for it, first," I said tiredly.