cranky pixels

Today I dropped off the paperwork for Ellison’s preschool. Paperwork, I’m telling you. It was somewhat unsurprising that I had to make an exhaustive list of the kid’s immunizations (which are thankfully up to date), but then there was this parental survey in which we were to wax lyrical about “things you appreciate about your child” and “what makes your child joyful?” Dude. When I was in school, no one gave a damn what made me joyful. (Hint: it was reading.) They just cared whether I showed up on time and sat quietly during class. This whole new-age preschool thing is nuts.

Even so, I can’t wait. Ellison is so excited he can barely stand it. I have a feeling preschool is one of the things that is going to fill my child with joy.

I keep finding myself trying to describe what it feels like to get depressed. Which is ridiculous, if you think about it, because it’s not like I sit around trying to find the words to explain not being depressed – and, let’s face it, if you look at the averages that’s how I spend most of my life. But the Prozac (you knew I’d talk about the Prozac again eventually, didn’t you?) has been working, so there has been much less of the doom and gloom and somewhat more of the hey, look at that, things don’t suck entirely! which is a very nice change and I hope it stays that way.

But.

So I just snarfed a huge piece of really gross cake and I feel elephantine and miserable and I really want to sit in a quiet room where I have no projects (over)due and no one is demanding that I console them while they pee on me,* for christ’s sake, and maybe, just MAYBE, I can sleep for more than two hours at a stretch, please, yes?

*The kid is having a slight potty-training relapse. I mention this in case you were entertaining notions of a more adult nature, which, ew.

Yesterday Ellison said we needed to “blow on the outside.”

Yeah, there’s been a heat wave in Portland.

This weekend’s been a mixed bag. On the plus side: I slept some, the cake was really good, my friend Christian is in town, and we got to visit Jes and Eric. The down? Work, work, more work, kid being impossible…the usual.

I got into this completely pointless sort-of argument with my friend this afternoon about a mutual friend who had killed himself years ago, and seriously, why do I not just keep my mouth shut about stuff like this? It’s not anyone else’s fault that I have an irrational pet peeve about canonizing the dead. It’s not helpful to point out that maybe the deceased wasn’t the stand-up guy everyone seems to (now) refer to him as. (You can tell I’m upset because my sentence structure has gone all to hell.)

So I feel kind of bad about that, and even worse about the fact that I drank wine, because now my head hurts and I have no one to blame but myself.

But: there were chickens.

SO, my husband is camping again. It’s lovely that my husband camps, and even lovelier that he does it without me (my idea of a vacation does NOT involve sleeping on dirt, with the bugs and the nature). But it’s his second week-long camping trip in as many months, and we’re WAY behind on work, and the stuff he was supposed to have ready for me before he left is not, how shall I say, ready.

This does not result in a Happy Fun Me.

Also: solo parenting. Generally I like one-on-one time with the kid. Generally we have a pretty good time when daddy is out of town. Generally I don’t have to spend every waking second typing frantically on my computer while the kid pulls on my arm and (quite reasonably) demands attention. I would like to point the reader to Exhibit A, wherein I took the kid for a week-long vacay at my sister’s house so Not So could get some uninterrupted work time – and I STILL ended up having to do a ton of unexpected work because he got all swamped with projects at the last minute and yeah.

Yeah. Our entrepreneurial adventure has hit a rough spot. Send reinforcements in the form of chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate, I made a chocolate cake late last night, as sort of an apology to the kid (and also to assuage my massive PMS of doom). Much of it ended up stuck to the bottom of the pan, despite the fact that I followed the instructions for greasing the pan to the letter, thank you very much, but I filled in the empty bits with frosting. Ha! Take that, cake! I also ate the stuck-on bits myself with my fingers and went to bed all jittery with sugar. Good times.

The boys are camping this weekend.

Wait a second. Let me say that again: the boys are camping this weekend.

Given that there are three of us, with two of us gone that just leaves me. Alone. Completely, blissfully alone. For the entire weekend.

I barely know what to do with myself. I feel like the horse in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. To wit:

It slowly surveyed the whole field, and then decided to plan out a nice relaxed day for itself. A little trot later on, it thought, maybe around threeish. After that a bit of a lie down over on the east side of the field where the grass was thicker. It looked like a suitable spot to think about supper in.

Lunch, it rather fancied, could be taken at the south end of the field where a small stream ran. Lunch by a stream, for heaven’s sake. This was bliss.

It also quite liked the notion of spending half an hour walking alternately a little bit to the left and then a little bit to the right, for no apparent reason. It didn’t know whether the time between two and three would be best spent swishing its tail or mulling things over.

Of course, it could always do both, if it so wished, and go for its trot a little later. And it had just spotted what looked like a fine piece of hedge for watching things over, and that would easily while away a pleasant preprandial hour or two.

Good.

An excellent plan.

And the best thing about it was that having made it the horse could now completely and utterly ignore it.
- Douglas Adams

The horse, people? The horse is me.

Heeeeeeeeee.