Happy Darwin Day to me

I’ve been having a mid-life crisis of sorts lately.  Some would say I’m too young to have a mid-life crisis, but that’s assuming that I live to be, like, 100.  My mother lived to be 53, so technically she should have had a mid-life crisis at 27.  From that perspective I’m way overdue.

The only thing I don’t like about getting older, aside from my mind going, is that I suddenly have all this anxiety about losing my looks.  Until recently I didn’t realize I had any looks to lose.  I thought I’d come to terms with the fact that I’m an average-looking girl who has to get by on her wits in this world.  Maybe it’s the fact that I’m losing my wits that feeds my desperation regarding the other.  I don’t know.  Well, I wouldn’t, would I, because I’m getting stupider as we speak.  It’s not fair, in any respect.

Yesterday I was taking Elvis to speech therapy, and I forgot how to get there.  I got off at the right exit, but I failed to immediately turn left, and a few moments later I was completely lost.  I had no idea what I’d done wrong.  I thought I’d taken the right exit, but maybe I hadn’t.  Maybe I went one too far.  It was kind of hard to believe because I drive him there every Monday, and moreover, I had just been to the dentist that morning, which is right next door to his speech therapy, and I didn’t have any trouble doing that.  I figured if I could just remember how to get to the dentist’s, I would automatically remember how to get to speech therapy, but unfortunately I couldn’t remember how to get to the dentist’s anymore, either.  I knew that I could get there taking the same street that the rec center was on–the rec center where Princess Zurg took her ballet classes when she was seven years old–but I didn’t find that working for me either, because what street was that again?  Was it this one?  Did I really take the wrong exit?  I didn’t think so, but I must have, so I turned back and tried to retrace my steps–which, incidentally, is not something you want to do at 4 p.m., just in case you were wondering–but that wasn’t working for me either.  Under ordinary PMS circumstances, I would have been screaming and cursing at this point, but I wasn’t doing either of those things.  I was trying hard not to cry because, seriously, I have been driving this route every week since Elvis was three, and I’ve never had any trouble with it before, and now I literally did not know anymore where speech therapy was in relation to…anything.

The good news is that it only took six minutes, total, for it all to come back to me, but it was the longest six minutes of my life.

It was like that time I got down on the floor to change Girlfriend’s diaper and forgot how to do it.  Usually I get down on the floor to change Girlfriend’s diaper and forget that’s why I got down on the floor.  This time I knew why I was there, but I couldn’t figure out how to begin.  “So I’m here to change a diaper,” I thought to myself, diaper in hand and wipes at the ready.  “What comes first, again?”

That only lasted about thirty seconds, tops, but it was still disconcerting.  Perhaps even you are disconcerted.  Or perhaps you yourself experience this about twenty times a day, in which case I’m sorry I brought it up because you’re much worse off than I am.  I’ve only had these two incidents in, like, a year.  Twenty times a day I forget what stuff is called or why I walked from one end of the room to the other or why I turned around or what my husband’s name is, but this business of forgetting how to change a diaper or how to drive my son to speech therapy–stuff that ought to be muscle memory by now–has only happened twice.  So it’s not time for assisted living yet, but clearly that’s where I’m headed, so I ask you:  If I lose my wits, exactly what am I supposed to fall back on then?

It doesn’t seem like this should be related to me dying my hair, and maybe it isn’t, but all I know is that when my mind was young and spry, I didn’t worry about gray hair or those permanent creases in my forehead that I got from furrowing my brow fourteen hours a day.  Do you realize that as I type this, I am attempting to ward off the signs of aging by raising my eyebrows as high as I can get them, i.e. in the opposite of the furrowed position?  Do you think that will help?

I am already dying my hair.  I own three tubes of lipstick, which is more than I’ve ever had at one time, and I might go through all of them in fewer than six years.  I am back to wearing eye make-up on special occasions, even though it makes me cry, which is kind of a counter-productive beauty regimen, if you think about it, but what does my brain know anymore?  I am still sort of planning to get braces.  A couple weeks ago I was thinking about getting my ears pierced, and for the last 48 hours I have seriously considered getting my boobs done.  I mean, why not?  I’m all done breast-feeding, and it would be nice to have some body parts that a bra could support.  Rephrase:  it would be nice to have body parts that a bra could fit.  You know, just for a change.

I’m not going to get my boobs done, of course.  I’m probably not even going to get braces.  Do you know what I was thinking on my way to the dentist yesterday?  I was thinking about how long it takes to do my hair in the morning.  Answer:  about two minutes.  Five minutes if I want to get fancy.  How improved is my appearance by combing my hair?  About ten times, minimum.  So why don’t I comb my hair every day?  It is a mystery.

That is why I know I’m not getting braces.  I can’t handle the pressure of spending two-to-five minutes on my hair everyday–I can barely manage to color my hair ever six to eight weeks–so how am I going to handle the responsibility of the detailed dental hygiene and orthodontal maintenance required by braces?  Even thinking about getting my boobs done–I’m just going to have to get them done again in ten years, so what’s the point?  You see the extent of my problem.

Another problem with getting my boobs done is that every time I look at my fabulous new breasts, I will feel guilty about the fact that the money I put into them could have fed x number of families starving in another part of the world for x number of months.  (I don’t have the math on me–I haven’t researched the boob job that thoroughly yet.)

Of course, another potential problem that I haven’t really explored is that I’ll be so pleased with my fabulous new breasts that I’ll want to show them to everybody I meet, which will introduce a host of issues I don’t wish to discuss right now.

In a perfect world, women would be rewarded for their part in continuing the species by being allowed to keep either their bodies or their minds for the 30-50 years they have left on earth.  They shouldn’t have to lose both.

Random tidbits to suggest an aura of functionality

How do you pronounce “Cuchulain”?

When I took my mythology course as an undergraduate, I think the professor pronounced the “ch” as in “choo choo.”  I’m pretty sure (in retrospect) that this was incorrect, but I could be mistaken about him having done it that way.  He was an extraordinarily competent person and I would hate to libel him as a mispronouncer of great names in Irish mythology based on nothing but my (often) faulty memory.  Not that you should hold it against him anyway, because one can only be an expert on so many things, and there doesn’t appear to be any clear consensus on how to pronounce “Cuchulain” anyway, so why not pronounce the “ch” like “choo choo,” if that’s how you feel like doing it?  What are the Irish going to do about it?  Huh?

The professor who taught the Yeats seminar at my (first) graduate school pronounced it “koo-HOO-lin,” which there seems to be a lot more support for on the internet.  However, I recently heard someone of Irish descent–who furthermore obviously had some knowledge about his ancestors’ mythological heroes–pronounce it “koo-KULL-lin.”  And “koo-KULL-lin” is how they say it in Suidakra’s “Feats of War.”  Listen:

Who are you going to believe?

This year Elvis is attending the same school that Princess Zurg attended before she got sent to the School for Incorrigible Girls.  I am noticing the same pattern of behavior among people who learn that one of my children is attending this school.  It goes like this:

Person:  So where is Elvis [or PZ, as the case used to be] going to school?

Me:  Super-Awesome Elementary.  [Not the the school's real name but suitable enough for the purposes of this story]

Person:  I’ve never heard of that.  Where is it?

Me:  It’s over by Hospital X.  [Not the hospital's real name but again, suitable enough etc.]

Person:  [confused expression, seeming to indicate that more specific information is necessary...waiting...waiting...waiting for me to say something else to support my assertion that the school does exist]

Why on earth would people do this?  I tell you my kid goes to Super-Awesome Elementary; that really ought to be enough for you, I think.  I understand being curious about where it is, but when I say it’s by Hospital X, how is that not enough for you?  I know you know where Hospital X is.  It’s impossible to live on this side of the city and not know where Hospital X is.  Your last child was probably born there.  It is a major landmark.  It’s where they wanted to build the Wal-Mart.  They provide medical care to the sick and injured.  Any of this ringing a bell?

If you’re wondering how you could have driven past Hospital X for so many years and never noticed an elementary school, it’s because it’s not exactly right next door to the hospital.  It is a few blocks up and off of the major thoroughfare that the hospital is on.  But I’m not going to tell you that the school is not actually next door to the hospital but actually next door to the Smith family who live on Random Street-name Lane because I think the likelihood of you knowing where the Smiths live is much smaller than the likelihood of you understanding the GENERAL LOCATION of Hospital X, the only MAJOR LANDMARK by this school that I promise you does exist even though you’ve never seen it.  You don’t really need latitude and longitude, do you?  Why don’t you just Google it?  Why are you hassling me?

I couldn’t tell you why this frustrates me so much, but it’s just been bugging me lately.

I took four years of German in high school.  Don’t ask why, I just did.  My college didn’t offer German, so I took two years of Spanish.  I have mostly forgotten whatever I knew about either language.

My husband also took German in high school.  In college he took Latin.  On his mission he learned to ask three questions in Spanish.  They were the questions you had to ask converts before they could get baptized.  I think one of them was “Have you ever killed anyone?”  Maybe not, but regardless of that, none was the sort of question that would be useful in casual conversation.  Through various foreign-born acquaintances he has learned to say “you smell like a monkey” in, like, eight or sixteen different languages.  When he was teaching SAT prep classes in California, his students taught him to say various rude things in Chinese, such as “Your math is terrible!” and “Your mother has AIDS!”  (Note:  the latter was unsolicited information, and fortunately he has never had to use it.  …  I should probably mention that he has never used it gratuitously, either.)

Princess Zurg is taking a foreign language in middle school, but it’s not German or Spanish or Latin or Chinese.  It’s French.  Ooh la la!  It just occurred to me that I don’t know if my husband knows how to say “you smell like a monkey” in French, even though his brother served a mission in France and was reasonably fluent in it at one time even if he hasn’t kept it up much since.  I’m having a hard time imagining that he never asked my brother-in-law to teach him that phrase; on the other hand, I have never heard him use it specifically.  I have a feeling, though, that that little tidbit will come out eventually–probably at a parent-teacher conference.  Time will tell.

I want to thank everyone for the Minis of encouragement and the like.  I am much less sanity-challenged today than I was yesterday.  I’ve been off my Effexor for almost a week, and I’m pre-menstrual, which isn’t helpful.  This situation is too complicated to explain, but I can tell you that I am reading this book, It’s My Ovaries, Stupid! to try to figure out if it really is my ovaries (…stupid).  And if it is my ovaries (stupid), I don’t rightly know what I’ll do about it, but I can’t imagine I’ll like any of the options.  You know what kind of options I like?  Easy ones.  Ovaries are apparently not for the stupid to figure out.  That doesn’t bode well for me.  But I digress.

I was going to say that I am trying to manage my life better by making these short to-do lists.  (Today’s list:  Shower.  Check.  I feel better already.)  It is harder than it sounds.  I have never been good at short to-do lists.  I’m better at making long to-do lists, failing to do most of what’s on them and consequently hating myself for my failures.  That’s really where my strengths lie.  However, I am willing–for the sake of science, if nothing else–to give these short to-do lists a go.  Today I put seven things on my to-do list.  (Two of them were “Change the baby’s diaper” and “Feed the baby breakfast.”  Check and check!  I’m like Superwoman today, kids.)

I took my compulsion to craft long to-do lists and channeled it into a “Things I Can Do Today If I Really Want To But Only If I Really Want To” list.  It’s twice as long and far more challenging, and I haven’t done any of it so far.  But then again, I haven’t wanted to.  Which means that I have been very successful in compartmentalizing my lists.  If that were on one of my lists, I could check it off.  Theoretically.  But I’m also working on not making such long lists, so I left it off.

I’m to be congratulated.

Well, I’m off to take my thyroid supplement (also on the list–I’ll let you guess which one).  I hope you all have a lovely weekend.  A collective lovely weekend.  Or separate lovely weekends.  Whichever.  (Clear and accurate writing isn’t on my to-do list either.  I figure if it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen.)

Today I

…did the dishes.

…took a load of wet laundry out of the washer and put it in the dryer and filled the washer with a new load of laundry.

…faced my fear of fire to light a candle for my friend’s birthday muffin.

…made muffins for my friend’s birthday.

It doesn’t seem like a lot, until you factor in the magnitude of the nervous breakdown I suffered between the hours of 7:45 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.  Then I think I’m a freaking hero.

Tomorrow I might

…take a shower.

Stay tuned.

Stranded!

My husband went for a day business trip to Santa Clara, California, yesterday and got stuck there because he was wait-listed for his flight back and couldn’t get another until today.  He’s not too broken up about it.  All his work there is done, so theoretically he’s getting up this morning and going swimming in the ocean.  At least that’s what he told me he was going to do, and he has no reason to lie to me.

I remember the last time I got stuck in California because I couldn’t get a flight out.  It was September 11, 2001.  It was kind of the same thing, only instead of being stuck at the beach for a day, I was stuck with my relatives and two small children in the inland valley for a week.

I wouldn’t have been too broken up about it, except that the reason I was there in the first place was that my father and his wife invited me to come down there for a mental health vacation, you know, to spell me with the kids and let me rest up a bit–only a couple days after I got there, my step-mother needed a rest from the kids, so I went to visit my in-laws for the remainder of my visit, only on my (scheduled) last day there was that horrible national tragedy and I had to go back to my dad’s house because he lived closer to the airport I was hoping to get a flight out of VERY SOON, only I didn’t get one very soon but a week later, only I couldn’t stand it at my dad’s house for a whole week so I decided to go back to my in-laws’ for a couple days, and that was okay except for me getting into a car accident on the way there because the kids were whining and touching each other in the back seat and I had to turn around and yell at them or something, which was stupid because, you know, I was on the freeway going 70 miles per hour, and you really shouldn’t let yourself be distracted under those conditions, but fortunately no other cars were involved and no one was hurt–even the car still worked, but it was scary–so I was at my in-laws’ for a couple days, then back at my dad’s house again before finally getting on a flight back to Oregon.

The flight got in at midnight-something, and the kids were mostly asleep and couldn’t carry their own crap or walk of their own volition, so I was carrying at least one of them, plus all their crap, all the way from our gate to the baggage claim, which were the two farthest points away from each other at the airport, naturally, and about 100 feet from where Sugar Daddy was waiting for me (because he couldn’t meet me at the gate, because of the new security measures) I could no longer feel my arms, so I decided I would rent one of those carts, even though I only had 100 feet to go because I could not feel my arms–except that I didn’t have any cash on me, so I got out my credit card and put it in the credit card slot, only to get a message that it wasn’t taking credit cards AT THIS TIME.  It was those last three words that did it for me.  I think I dropped Mister Bubby on the floor and started beating up on the a la carte machine with both my feets and screaming the F-word as loud as I could.  Well, in my head I was screaming the F-word.  In reality I was so tired that I could only scream, “GAHDAFADABADDAFOCKALACKABLAHDEBLAHDEBLECK!” But that was okay, everyone got the idea.

Meanwhile, pummeling the a la carte machine had restored feeling to my limbs, and once I was out of breath and voice, I picked the baby and all our crap back up and pushed the half-asleep Princess Zurg with my foot the rest of the way to meet my husband, who was not remotely pleased to see me.  You see, I was supposed to return from my “vacation” tanned, rested and ready, and instead I was the same crazy bitch he’d dropped off at the airport two weeks earlier.  Who wouldn’t be sorely disappointed under those circumstances?

I don’t want you to get the idea that I begrudge my husband his opportunity to go swimming in the ocean.  I hope he finds it very refreshing.  Especially since we’ll be at the beach again tomorrow, with the kids, and you can’t rent a la carte carts at the beach for cash or credit.

Today is the day I have my nervous breakdown

Have you ever seen that episode of Scrubs where Turk asks Carla what’s bothering her, and she peels back her scalp and there is a gushing forth of all her neurotic thoughts and obsessions?  That’s what this blog is going to be like.

I am doubled over with guilt for the following reasons, in no particular order:

1.  Last month I called Princess Zurg’s best friend’s stepmother to see if PZ’s best friend could come to PZ’s birthday party and found out that PZ’s best friend broke her leg in a really bad way over Spring Break and was totally bed/couch-ridden for the next couple weeks and still needed to have another surgery and was going to have limited mobility because of the whole crutches thing for however long it takes to recuperate from a broken leg that’s been broken that badly.  So that’s why PZ didn’t have a birthday party this year, because if the best friend can’t come, what’s the point?  And the reason I didn’t know about PZ’s best friend’s broken leg before this was because PZ’s best friend lives on the other side of town and her family doesn’t have a car, and so we don’t see her very often at all, especially not since PZ has been going to a different school for the last year.  I can count on one hand–probably half of one hand–the number of times PZ has seen her best friend over the last year.  That is the state of PZ’s social life.  That I felt guilty enough about already, and I didn’t think it was possible to feel much guiltier, but I didn’t foresee the broken leg.  When I heard about the broken leg, I felt just awful for PZ’s best friend, and I said I would certainly bring PZ over for a visit, soon.  In fact, I penciled it into my calendar for that week.  But it didn’t actually work out for that week, and I told myself I would have to pencil it in for some other day the following week, but you know what?  I never picked up another pencil, and I never took PZ to see her best friend with the broken leg.  It’s been a month.  I could still take her–I still want to take her, or think I want to take her, or think I mean to take her, but I’m beginning to suspect that maybe I really don’t mean or want to take her and never actually did because if I really did, I would have done it by now, wouldn’t I have?  The truth is that a best friend on the other side of town is much like a starving child in Africa to me, only without a convenient little intermediary organization like UNICEF that I can write a check to and thereby assuage my guilt.  No, I have to actually block out some time in my schedule to actually visit the best friend on the other side of town myself, but that is too much work, and that is why I’m a terrible human being.  Moving on!

2.  Lest ye think the best friend with the broken leg is some kind of aberration in my ordinarily-chock-full-o’-thoughtfulness life, I also have an aunt who lives on the other side of Portland, whom I see about once a year.  No, once a year is too generous.  I see her about once every year and a half, usually when some other member of my family comes through Portland and says, “I should really see B. while I’m here,” and I say, “Oh yeah, that’d be good, I’ll go with you.”  My aunt is getting on in years and is now in a nursing home.  I don’t know exactly how long she’s been in the home because I didn’t realize she’d gone there until my older sister mentioned it to me one day.  I know she’s only been in there sometime since last July because last July I went to see her in her house (not “the home”), but still, I haven’t been to see her in “the home” and don’t even know which home it is because I haven’t called any of my cousins to find out or get an address to send a frakking Christmas card, should I be so humanitarily inclined this year.  I’ve lived a half-hour away from her for the last five years, and I just haven’t gone to see her because I haven’t wanted to think about what to do with the children or when would be a good time to go or calling on the phone and having a conversation–it’s all just been too much, darling, too much, because I’m a terrible human being.  But wait!  There’s more.

3.  After the turbulent elementary school years with Princess Zurg, I have been so relieved and happy that Mister Bubby has done well in school and has never been a problem for anyone and always does his homework and has just generally let me send him off to school and not worry about him for six-and-a-half hours, five days a week.  Then a few weeks ago I got a call from his best friend’s mother, who wanted to know if I was also concerned about the fact that our sons have learned exactly nothing new in school this year, that they are still doing the same crap they did in first grade, only with slightly different worksheets.  That was the first time I ever really stopped to think about it and realized that actually, yes, now that you mention it, Mister Bubby has been complaining that school is boring and he already knows everything they’re teaching him and why can’t he just go to third grade, and yes, they do have an awful lot of worksheets, don’t they?  What the hell is up with the worksheets?  I don’t remember doing so many worksheets when I was in school.  I guess they can’t afford books and slates anymore because they have to buy computers so our children can be competitive in the twenty-first century.  And what are they using the computers for?  Hell if I know.  The last time I was involved in a child’s education, it was primarily for the purpose of figuring out how I could get myself less involved on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis.  All I’ve ever really wanted was to send my kid off to school for six-and-a-half hours a day, five days a week, and not have to worry about anything beyond that.  I don’t remember my parents being that involved in my education until I was in high school and the math got harder.  I’m feeling a lot of resentment over the fact that I’m devoting all of May 29–paying a babysitter for six-and-a-half hours–to volunteering at the school for “Australia Day,” the annual second grade extravaganza.  It’s not like I ever volunteer at the school if I can possibly help it, and usually I can help it quite a bit because our neighborhood school is overrun with parents who volunteer for everything.  It’s a very competitive game–who will be the lucky soul who gets to chaperone the field trip to the rock museum???–and I’ve been quite content not to play it.  They used to make me volunteer to chaperone field trips because PZ was supposedly so volatile that even being attended by her own freaking aide was not enough, no, she had to have parental supervision if they were going to take her off of school property, and so, yes, I was pleased as punch not to be doing that anymore–but now it’s freaking Australia Day and they need all the helping hands they can get and MB wants me there anyway because I never volunteer and possibly he’s afraid the other kids assume that his mom must be some kind of crack mom because she’s never seen on school property during school hours.  And that’s how I got roped into being a group leader in the morning and running the flipping didgeridoo in afternoon, whatever the hell any of that means, I haven’t even looked at my job description(s) yet because I’ve been so preoccupied with the fact that I pay all this money in property taxes and my neighbors spend so much of their time helping out in the school, and my son is still doing first-grade worksheets in flipping May and what the hell does he need a flipping didgeridoo for anyway?  I’m so angry about it and yet I feel I have no one but myself to blame because I was the one who wanted a worry-free education for my son–rather, an education for my son that was worry-free for me–and this is just what you get for not worrying:  fill-in-the-blank worksheets and mother-frakking didgeridoos.  Nice work, Mother.  I hope you ate a lot of bon bons this year while your son’s brain was atrophying!

4.  We were thinking of sending Elvis to summer camp this year.  Rather, Sugar Daddy thought it would be a good idea to send Elvis to this summer camp for children with disabilities, and I had no argument against it because hey, who doesn’t need to get rid of Elvis for a couple hours a day during the summer?  So we sent away for an application for this camp, and we got the paperwork in the mail a couple weeks ago, and I started to fill it out because I’m pretty good at filling out paperwork.  I did all right with the name and address and emergency contacts and doctors and insurance information, and then I got to the section where I had to describe in detail the extent of my child’s disability and his specific challenges, and I thought, “I can’t do this right now, I’m going to do it later,” because after all this time I still have trouble confronting these facts about my son.  I have a visceral response to requests for quantification about his disability.  I just can’t handle it.  I don’t understand why, but I just can’t, and by “can’t,” I really mean I just don’t want to, and I don’t know why, but I just don’t.  But I have to, or he’s not going to go to camp, and I will be sorry later, sometime this summer, when he’s driving me crazy and eating all the popsicles and replacing all the batteries in all of the small appliances and can’t find the right screwdriver and wants me to push him 89 times on the swing but he really means 99 times and he gets frustrated and starts yelling, “aaahhhAAAHHHHaaahhhhAAAAHHHHHaaaahhhhAAAHHHHHaaahhhhAAAAHHHHH” with the full force of his diaphragm behind it for the forty-seventh time that day, and I will probably start screaming myself and want to pop him one and possibly I will actually pop him one because I can’t stand it anymore, and I will only have myself to blame because I was too lazy to fill out the paperwork on time so he could go to camp and make me a little bit less crazy.  And I wonder how I can love my son so much while simultaneously not wanting him around very much.  Maybe I don’t love him as much as I think I do, unless he’s asleep.  That’s just not right.  Which reminds me, I need to find that frakking paperwork and fill it out, and now I’m afraid I won’t be able to find it.

5.  Girlfriend is almost 42 months old and still needs to be toilet-trained.  Sugar Daddy did the heavy lifting with toilet training Elvis, although that was mostly because he finally got the idea that I wasn’t going to do it, and so now he deserves a medal and I need to get on the stick and finally toilet-train our non-disabled child, who has absolutely no desire to use the toilet.  In point of fact, she has the opposite of desire.  I think sometimes that I was born in the wrong era.  As much as I enjoy the conveniences of modern life, I often wish that I could have parented back in the day when adults weren’t supposed to care about scarring their children for life, and if they didn’t do what Ma or Pa said, Ma or Pa could just beat them with a stick and voila, instant compliance–and they didn’t grow up to be serial killers or anything, just average, reasonably-productive citizens who also beat their children with sticks.  Not that I want to beat my child with a stick–no, I am far too modern and enlightened to have such feelings, but I admit that I am just plain old weary of trying to figure out how to get my children to do stuff without beating them with a stick.  How did toileting get to be so complicated?  How did human beings evolve to the point where sitting in their own filth is a preferred state?  I have seen each of my children reach the stage where they were interested in the toilet, only to immediately recoil upon being offered a toileting opportunity–and not only recoil, but turn and run in the opposite direction, screaming bloody murder, huddling in a corner every time the word “potty” is uttered–leaving me feeling very much like a guy who’s misinterpreted a pretty girl’s attentions and ends up not only offending her with my romantic advances but turning her into a lesbian besides.  What on earth have I done?

6.  I am seriously considering giving up my housekeepers because it is so depressing to me to walk around my house and realize that I’ve just been engaging in a bi-monthly exercise of shoving stuff in closets and drawers so someone else can come vacuum and mop, and once the vacuuming and mopping is done, all the crap that we own just comes SPROING!ing out of aforementioned closets and drawers and deposits itself all over the floors and countertops, along with the neverending stream of new crap that finds its way into our house on a daily basis.  I am just ready to surrender to entropy already.  I caught up on the laundry, sort of–the clothes part, I was mostly caught up on, and then I had this backlog of towels I had to wash, so I’ve washed nothing but towels for the last two days, which is not to say I’ve been continuously washing towels for 48 hours, but towels is all I’ve washed, and now I have an unbelievable backlog of actual clothes that need to be washed again because you just can’t go 48 hours without washing clothes, not when you have six people in your family, all of whom wear clothes.  What do I do all day long?  Seriously, what do I do?  You know how OBL can’t go grocery shopping until she’s organized her pantry?  I look in my pantry, which is an unqualified disaster, and I just think, “I would sooner never eat again than try to figure out what the hell is in here,” and then I cram another cereal box in there, close the door real quick-like, and jam a chair in front of it so it doesn’t SPROING! open again.  I’m like the anti-OBL.  It’s not like I do nothing.  Obviously, I am filling up my days with something other than blogging and Facebooking because people still have clean clothes and they have food to eat and there is toilet paper in the house, but on the other hand, there’s all this entropy and long-neglected best friends with broken legs and aunts in failing health and summer camp paperwork unfilled-out and three-year-olds in diapers, and I have to tell you, people, it’s not because I don’t have enough hours in the day.  It’s probably because my parents didn’t beat me with a stick more when I was little.

Okay, it was good to get that off my chest.  I’m not going to visit anyone’s best friend today, but I think I will do the dishes and start on the laundry and pick up the 47,368 pieces of paper that are lying all over my living room floor.  I might even sweep the kitchen floor.  I should go to the Target, but I don’t remember why.  Somebody’s prescription.  Also, I’m pretty sure that since I’ve said the word “frak” about 67 times before 10 a.m. today, it probably means that I should pick up some tampons, too.  Incidentally, I feel like “frak” is so much more satisfying than saying the actual F-word, it’s got to be more vulgar somehow.  In any case, I should probably stop saying it around my kids.  I’ll put that on my list of stuff I “mean” or “want” to do.  Damn, I’m gonna eat some chocolate cake now.

Madhousewife is in the house

Sugar Daddy:  You’re going to be 38 soon, and I’m going to make fun of you for being old.

Madhousewife:  Wow.  That will be so different from how you ordinarily treat me that I won’t know how to react.  My feelings will be so hurt.

SD:  See you later, old lady.  I’m going to bring you a cane when I come home.

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I have been in a most serious funk as of late, and I can assure you all it is not because I am turning 38 in a few days.  I have been anticipating turning 38 for quite some time.  I’m actually looking forward to it because truth be told, I’m not all that fond of the number 37.  But that’s neither here nor there.  I don’t care about being older.  I care about being happy.

I dialed up my dose of Effexor so I am taking double what I was a few weeks ago.  I’m still waiting for that to kick in.  Or maybe it has kicked in, and I really have nothing left to live for.  Just kidding!  No, I’m fine, I’m just totally lacking in motivation, energy and overall spunk.  It makes it very hard to clean the house and also to do things that are not ordinarily odious.  I have to force myself to socialize with others.  If I’ve written more than 500 words in the last five weeks, I’d be quite surprised to learn it.  I’ve even been way down on the Facebook usage.  That’s how serious it is.

Obviously, I need to eat better and get more exercise.  I’m just saying that so you don’t have to tell me.  I’m on record as knowing it.

Speaking of eating better, I could totally go for a pizza right now.  Or some fried chicken.  Maybe some fried chicken AND pizza.  I’m not actually going to eat either of those things.  Nor am I going to bust out the two bags of Cheetos I’m hiding in the garage.  Maybe.

I was going to blog about Miss California and her controversial photographs, but I lost interest in the middle of it.  Or I forgot what my opinion was.  Maybe both.  How long ago was that, anyway?  Princess Zurg said something funny the other day.  I wrote it down somewhere.  Mister Bubby said something, too, but I didn’t write it down, and now I’ve forgotten it.  I knew I would.  At the time he said it, I thought, “That’s so funny, I should write it down so I don’t forget it.  But it’s not convenient to write it down now.  I’ll have to just concentrate so hard on being amused that I never forget it.  Yeah, that’s not going to work.”  And just as I predicted, it didn’t.

I have a tap recital in…nine days.  I don’t feel remotely prepared.  I haven’t been practicing enough.  It’s a good thing I’m in the back row this year.  On the plus side, I think I will look really cute in my costume.

Last night we took the kids to the library.  We haven’t been to the library in ages.  I checked out three serial killer books.  I think those ought to lift my spirits.

I don’t feel sorry for myself.  If I felt sorry for myself, I’d have more to write.  But…yeah, I got nothing.  Sorry.  (For you.)

Madhousewife is the new Ennui Czar for the Obama administration.

You might be clinically depressed if…

…the tastiest thing you have eaten all day is your fish-oil supplement.

…you consider clicking on the “Support” tab in the upper right corner of your blog dashboard before you realize that it means technical support.

…you hear a bus and you think, “OMG, is that my daughter’s bus?  Is it time to pick up my son already?” and then you panic as you realize that it is after 4:00, and you don’t remember receiving your daughter’s bus or going to pick up your son, but then you realize that your daughter is watching TV in the other room and your son is playing on the computer not six feet away from you, so you must have picked them up and are just losing your freaking mind.

That’s what I’m talking about.

I had thought I was going to have a breakthrough a week and a half ago.  I was having the most awful week.  I went to Elvis’s Back-to-School night, and I was overcome with sadness because as far as my son has come in a relatively short time, I can’t get past the fact that the bar is set lower because of his disability.  I love Elvis and part of me wishes he’d never change–just as part of me would like to hold all my kids in their innocent stages forever–but every so often it really hits me hard that this is the proverbial Trip to Holland, and it isn’t mourning that I don’t get to go to Italy, but mourning that Elvis himself will never go to Italy.

I tried to erase that and say “may never,” but I couldn’t type that without thinking, “Right.  [In unison now]  Denial.”  At the same time, it feels like a crime not to have higher hopes.  I like to think I do have higher hopes, but in reality I just don’t deal with the future tense.  I deal with stuff as it happens, and I don’t have an end goal; it’s just an endless process of trying not to screw up too much.

I find myself getting irritated when someone asks if or when Elvis will be mainstreamed.  I say, “We’ll see how this year goes,” and the person says something like, “Well, he could be mainstreamed by second grade, maybe even first grade, you never know, if he has the right supports, etc.”–and I just want to say, “Shut up, I’m not dealing with it yet, just slow down!”  I don’t want to speculate about the future because I don’t want to be wrong and I don’t want to be right.  I don’t want the responsibility.

So I thought I was going to cry, sitting there in one of the little chairs in Elvis’s kindergarten classroom, with the teacher explaining about circle time and turn-taking and the blue table vs. the yellow table and snack time as a language-building activity–because I am so proud of Elvis and how much he’s learning and so delighted that he loves school, but this is still the land of windmills, and the temptation to tilt at one is just too strong.  It hurts me.

Also, I had PMS.

Another realization I had was that I put off seeing my psychiatrist because I don’t like returning untriumphant.  If I go back yet again with “Yeah, that medication isn’t doing it for me,” I feel like it isn’t the medication’s failure, but my own.  You know that line in The Importance of Being Earnest–”To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness”?  That’s how my pharmaceutical therapy is looking to me these days.  Surely this many drugs can’t be wrong.  I must be the one who’s wrong.

And yet I cannot right myself.  It is a most frustrating dilemma.

It’s become clear to me, however, that I must schedule more regular and frequent visits to the psychiatrist because I am completely incapable of managing my own mental health.  I need structure.  I need a framework.  I need to blather narcissistically in front of a trained professional who is paid to put up with my crap.  Because I am not just a normal housewife with a lot on her plate.  I seem to have dispensed with the plate and the stuff that should be on the plate is slipping through my fingers, and let me tell you, there is a lot of gravy there.  It’s a mess.

Plus, my metaphor machine is broken.  Gentle readers, adieu.

Mister Bubby, old-school warrior (plus bonus random bloggables)

Quote of the week:

“You don’t want to fiddle around when you have objectives.”
–Mister Bubby, on playing Heroes V:  Might and Magic

Mister Bubby:  Mama, Dad said when I’m 11, I can have a real sword.

Giraffemom:  He did?

MB:  Yeah.  And when I’m 12, I can get real armor.

GM:  Real armor’s good.  [Especially when you already have a real sword.]

MB:  And guess what?  When I’m 13, I’m gonna get a battle axe!  Won’t that be awesome?

GM:  Pretty awesome.  Are you going to get a gun?

MB (contemptuously):  No.  [Duh, Mom.] I want to learn how to do arrows.  Once I learn how to do arrows, I might get a gun.

GM:  Cool.

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I got nothing going on here.  Except that I need to go grocery shopping, and I don’t want to.  I don’t want to do anything.  Remember when I told you how I was going to Rock My World with Geodon®?  Well, Geodon did rock my world…to sleep! Remember how I’ve always said there’s no tired like pregnant-tired?  Well, there’s no sleepy like Geodon-sleepy.  At some point I burst into tears because I was so sick-unto-death of fighting unconsciousness.  But I had to fight it because I had things to do and places to go.  Yes, I did have to drive.  Don’t lecture me, I didn’t kill anybody, did I?  (Did I?)  Anyway, one cannot function when one is alternately bursting into tears and slipping into unconsciousness.  The funny thing is that the pharmacist specifically told me I must take the Geodon in the morning, as it has a tendency to interfere with sleep.  Which is funny because at the top of the list of possible side effects is “somnulence.”  That’s a big word.  I’ll give you three guesses as to what it means, and the first two don’t count.  Which makes me wonder if I shouldn’t start taking it again, only this time at night.  Except that I might never wake up again!

Which reminds me, my psychiatrist also instructed me to take some fish oil, but I keep forgetting.  I bought some in the pill form, but she also sent me these pudding packets (“Natural Orange Flavor”–mmmmm).  I’m looking at them right now.  They’re scaring me.  Because, dude, it’s fish oil, and it’s pudding.  Only 2.5 grams of fish oil pudding (“Natural Orange Flavor”!), but still.  I feel inexplicably queasy all of a sudden.  But you know what?  I have to do it some time.  So it may as well be now.  Yeah, that’s right, I’m going to eat one right now.  I am live-blogging fish-oil-pudding-eating!

Here I go.

Hm.  That’s not bad.  Actually, I kind of liked it.  And now I’m really scared.

Okay, there’s an aftertaste.  That’s not awesome.  I think I’ll eat some breakfast now.

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Oh, and since Repairman Jack already saw this in my Xanga photos, I have to explain about Tijuana Snoopy.  He was among the crapola I found whilst cleaning out the garage on Saturday.  (Snoopy, not Jack.)

You know, ordinarily I’m a fan of the Snoopy on Velvet, but I’ve discovered that some things are too tacky, even for us.  So how did I come to be in possession of Tijuana Snoopy?  Well, my kids’ babysitter, Gertrude, knows that I love Snoopy, and she mentioned that she and her husband had this velvet painting of Snoopy that they wanted to get rid of, but it was of Snoopy holding a tequila bottle and she wondered if that might be too tacky, even for us.  And I’m afraid I might have said something like, “Haha, Snoopy holding a tequila bottle, I think I need that picture,” because stuff like that is always funnier in theory than it is in real life.

I think I didn’t expect him to look quite so…menacing.  I mean, really, he looks like Snoopy as Angry Drunk, doesn’t he?  That bottle isn’t poised for drinking but for breaking over somebody’s head!  Also, he’s hugging a freaking cactus.  Obviously this is a dog you don’t want to mess with, especially if you’re just a mild-mannered housewife like myself.  Also, I think the real deal-breaker for me is that he’s got “Tijuana” written across his hat.  There’s a fine line between ironic kitsch and wow-that-is-just-sick-and-wrong, and I think the lettering crosses that line.  But what do I know?  I was just an English major.

Anyway, I’m still deciding what to do with it.  But first I have to get the taste of natural-orange-flavored fish oil out of my mouth.  Gentle readers, adieu.

Off the meds and running

Sugar Daddy: Your computer’s slow. Are you defragging your hard drive regularly?

Madhousewife: Well, I would, if I knew how to do that.

SD: I gots to learn you how to use a computer, woman.

Mad: No, I think the position you’ve taken is that I’m supposed to sit here and not know anything, and then when I tell you I don’t know anything, you can make fun of me.

SD: Well, that’s closer to the truth.

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So I promised you all an update on my latest experiment with psychopharmacology, specifically the FocalinXR. The good news is that I don’t have to tangle with my insurance company anymore over these prescriptions because I am all done with these stimulants, forever. No offense to the FocalinXR, which I’m sure is an awesome wonder drug for people with ADD and ADHD–including adults–but it is apparently not doing much for my problem because at 5 mg I feel no difference, and at 10 mg I want to scream and cry all the time. So I think we’re over that. Yes. All done. Very good. Except for the part about me feeling like crap all the time. But that’s another story.

Speaking of another story, I was driving home the other night and “Working My Way Back to You” by the Four Seasons came on the radio, and I started crying. Why? How should I know? It was disturbing, though. (Not quite as disturbing as that time in 1997 when I wept all the way through a Celine Dion song. Yes, I listened to the whole thing! That was the disturbing part!) But still, an obvious sign that I’m in a fragile emotional state.

And mental, too, because I woke up yesterday morning and couldn’t quite force myself out of bed, and so I was staring at my Joe Cool pajamas and realized for the first time that Snoopy wears his sunglasses with the stems under his ears. And I thought, “That just can’t be comfortable. It’s bugging me just looking at them.” So I stopped looking at them, of course, but it still bugged me. I mean, the more I thought about it, I supposed it made some sense–according to Charles Schulz, Snoopy’s ears are very strong; they keep him balanced on top of his dog house, you know. Well, that’s what he said! And it’s true that I don’t have dog ears, so how would I really know whether or not it’s comfortable to have sunglasses tucked under them or not? And yet, it just didn’t seem right to me.

Okay, I’m off my FocalinXR and obviously not focalizing very well. Have I mentioned also that I’m not sleeping very much? That’s a side issue, though. I wasn’t going to go there. I was just thinking about the name “Focalin” and how lame most prescription drug names are. I mean, “Prozac”: “Pro” + “Zac.” “Pro” sounds okay; it suggests forward movement. “Zac,” on the other hand, just sounds like something you take for crazy. I don’t know why. Because Z is a crazy letter, I guess. It’s probably no coincidence that it figures prominently in the word “crazy.” So “Prozac” makes it sound like you’re moving toward crazy rather than away from it. “Effexor” is a little better; it sounds like “effective,” plus it has an X in it, and X is a letter with super powers. (Hello? X-Men?) “Zoloft” has “loft,” which suggests a lifting of the mood, and that kind of off-sets the unstable Z at the beginning. “Wellbutrin” is another anti-depressant, and obviously, it has the word “well” in it, and that’s self-explanatory, but what kind of suffix is “butrin”? I can’t even begin to think of where one would get that from.

So my psychiatrist and I were making small talk about the lameness of drug brand names, and she thought the lamest one was “Abilify.” I said I actually liked the sound of “Abilify.” I think I like it because it doesn’t even attempt to be subtle. “Right now, you are unable, but this drug will ABILIFY you!” She said Abilify was next on her list of drugs for me to try, right after “Geodon.” Seriously, what the hell? “Geodon”? That’s like…a rock. And I guess I’ll be STEADY AS A ROCK after taking “Geodon.” Part of me still thinks there’s a market for something called “SuperHappyFun Pill,” but no one asked me.

Speaking of names and no one asking, I’ve never understood why people show so little imagination when naming streets. How many “Main” and “Southridge” and “Hilldale” and other boring street names are out there? If I was in charge of naming streets, I’d have some fun with it. My husband and I used to talk about building neighborhoods and naming the streets thematically. There could be a Math neighborhood, and it would have streets like “Parabola Place” and “Tangent Terrace.” “X-Axis” and “Y-Axis” could intersect in the middle. You could also have a Grammar neighborhood. Wouldn’t it be cool to say you lived on “Dangling Participle”? That would make it a somewhat dysfunctional grammar neighborhood, but you get the picture.

Seriously, though, the more I think about it, the more I like this “Abilify” drug–just the idea of it, I mean. Because you could have so much fun with the ad campaign. Your slogan could be “Abilify me!”

“Gosh, Fred, you’re looking well these days. What’s you secret? Exercise? New diet?”

“Nah, Zeke–I’ve just been ABILIFIED!”

Before:

After:

ABILIFIED!

But first I have to ROCK MY WORLD with GEODON!

Stay tuned, gentle readers. Happy weekend to you.

I feel like we don’t talk anymore

I just dropped Princess Zurg off at her first day of art camp.  She was dressed in all black (really) and was so excited.  I’ve been wanting to put her in art classes for years because she’s very talented, but it’s only been within the last year or so that I’ve felt confident in her ability to sit (or stand) in a class and follow directions to the extent that she could learn anything.  I hope that she has a good experience, since it’s going to last for a week.

I have been less than fully engaged in life, as of late.  Starting about a year ago, I thought to myself, “I should really wean the baby so I can get some better drugs in my system.”  Then last March I finally did wean the baby, and I went to my psychiatrist and said, “Better drugs, please.”  And that’s when this grand experiment with stimulants began.  What I’ve found with the stimulants is that at low doses they suppress my appetite but don’t particularly do anything for my mood.  At higher doses (which are still relatively low) they make me irritable and and dark (metaphorically, mood-wise, not like I tan more easily).  Also, the hoops through which one must jump to get insurance companies to approve these drugs (most often prescribed to treat ADHD symptoms) for adults–it’s somewhat ridiculous, which also makes me irritable and dark and somewhat prone to despair.  It is almost not worth the trouble.

So the last time I went to my psychiatrist and said, “Better drugs that aren’t stimulants, please,” she respected my feelings but nevertheless managed to talk me into giving one more stimulant the old college try.  It took about ten days to resolve the insurance issues, but for the past few days I’ve been taking FocalinXR, which isn’t suppressing my appetite any more than usual–having found that if one gets depressed enough, one can stop eating even without drug interference–but it’s been extremely difficult to discern what effect it’s having on my mood, if any.  I don’t want to jump off a bridge or anything, and I don’t particularly want to stay in bed all day, but on the other hand, food still doesn’t taste good and I am still more or less joie-de-vivre-free.  Some stimulant, eh?

Well, I’m only on 5 mg.  I suppose I should bump it up to 10 mg or something, but I really just too lazy.  And that makes me think that maybe 5 mg is perfectly sufficient to counteract depression, just not laziness, and perhaps laziness is my real problem, in which case I should be, what, asking for a caffeine prescription?  On the other hand, for a drug that’s supposed to treat ADHD–a condition I don’t have–it has not really helped my concentration.  Oh, look, is that a chicken?  No, but seriously, even writing–which, unlike the laundry and the dishes, I like to do–has been like pulling teeth these last few weeks.  Normally even when I’m depressed, I can still write.  I may even write better than usual.  But maybe that’s only when I’m eating.

Why on earth would I stop eating?  This is me we’re talking about.  I love eating.  Eating is one of my few reliable pleasures in life.  And yet I can barely bring myself to do it lately.  I want to, but, eh, I don’t want to.  And that’s just weird.

You know, I’m not looking for sympathy here.  I’m just talking.  It’s keeping me awake.  And from doing the dishes.  So don’t cry for me, gentle readers.  It will only make me feel guilty.

On a happier note, my friend odetocorny has revived my interest in Mad Housewife brand chardonnay.  Actually, Mad Housewife makes a chardonnay, a cabernet, a merlot, and a white Zinfandel–ooh la la!  I’ve always been curious whether Mad Housewife wine is any good, but I can’t find out for myself because a) drinking’s against my religion, and b) in order to do a proper comparison, I would have to sample many other kinds of wine, which is even more against my religion, and c) if I’m already depressed, I should probably not start drinking.  So I was wondering if any of you out there who already drink wine would be willing to pick up a bottle of Mad Housewife and tell me if it tastes okay, or if it’s just a cool gimmick.  Because, you know, if I get approached for an endorsement deal, I want to make an informed decision.  That’s all.

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When I pulled my teeth last night, I managed to produce another blog post for BCC.