Have any of you been wondering, “Whatever happened to the Madhousewife? Did she give up on the blogging? Did she get swallowed up by the devil Facebook? Does she just not love her online friends anymore?”

Well, actually, I have a hard time imagining any of you are wondering any of this. You probably have your own lives to lead. I, by contrast, do not have a life to lead. I have ennui to…have. Maybe it’s one of those malaise things that used to trouble the country during the Carter years. (I’ve heard. I wasn’t super-conscious of national events during the Carter years. In fact, when I heard there was a presidential debate between Ford and Carter, I imagined that President Ford was debating Gabe Kaplan.)

So what have I been up to? Just reading a lot of books and doing a lot of laundry. Occasionally bothering to parent a child here and there. Sometimes I even make dinner. It’s kind of lame.

I was going to inform you that for most of the time I’ve been gone, I’ve also been doing some actual writing–the kind that I don’t randomly post on the internet because it’s Serious. Also, it’s crap. I mean, that’s the bad news. The good news is that its being crap hasn’t stopped me from writing it, which is good because one of the problems I’ve had to get over as a writer is my fear of writing crap. Well, there’s no more fear of that anymore. I’m writing, and it’s crap! And the world hasn’t come to an end just because I’ve written some crap. Unfortunately. Sometimes I wish the world would come to an end, because then I could be like, “Ah, well, I never did manage to become a great writer, but how can I be sad about that when the world’s just come to an end?”

Actually, no, I never wish for the world to come to an end. I sometimes wish for the laundry to come to an end. More frequently I wish my obligation to make dinner would come to an end. I really, really don’t like making dinner. And yet I still do it. I think I should get extra points for the obstacle of reluctance.

My two younger children are off school today because of parent-teacher conferences. I don’t have a conference with Elvis’s teacher because we just had his IEP in February. I’m assuming. I never got any solicitation for conference appointment-making from the school or his teacher, and I’m assumed it was because we just had his IEP and there’s nothing new to talk about. I don’t think I am expected to hear that the kids have two days off of school because of parent-teacher conferences and take the initiative to contact the school and set up an appointment. That’s never been how it worked before. I do have an appointment with Girlfriend’s teacher. Elvis seems a bit disturbed that there is no parent-teacher conference scheduled on his behalf. This has caused me to question my assumption that if his teacher wanted to meet with me, she would have expressed some concern that I had not yet made an appointment. That is how it’s always worked in the past. One shouldn’t live in the past, of course. But that’s neither here nor there.

Well, speaking of Elvis, he is demanding that I play Monopoly Junior in the short time I have between now and when I have to go to Girlfriend’s conference. If there weren’t a limited amount of time, he would be demanding that I play regular Monopoly. So thank God for parent-teacher conferences.