I Don’t Want to Talk About It

Here are a few things I really don't want to talk about.

The election. I am all primary-ed out. I have severe voter fatigue. Whenever I hear either of the democratic candidates names, my nose starts to bleed.

Perimenopause. Yes, I am having my period. It's been 86 days since my last one. I was up half the night, gnawing on ibuprofen and applying heat to my very unhappy uterus.

The book fair. Today I attend the book fair with The Kid's class. I'll rejoice at his enthusiasm as we pick out some summer reading material and my heart will break for the kids who will have no money to buy books. The ones whose parents couldn't send money, or forgot, or (gasp) don't think books are important.

Sleep. The fact that The Kid could not get to sleep last night and tossed and turned until more than an hour past his bedtime, so he will be exhausted and cranky when he gets home and we have to rush to get homework done and get to karate (which we skipped last week because it was just too much).

Instead, look. I've been knitting on my sock and it's wobbly and uneven but I believe it will, in fact, one day be a sock.

Friday Night Fun

Last night, Lefty and I were sitting relaxing after a long week, watching a little mindless Food Network fun, and the smoke alarm went off. We, of course immediately pressed pause and went to check things out. (Not before Lefty looked at me and said "Is that the smoke alarm?" as if there would be some other high pitched electronic shrieking going on.)

Our smoke alarms are hard-wired into the house and work on a relay, so that if one goes off, they all join in. I'm sure this is an excellent safety feature but it makes it next to impossible to identify the culprit that was shrieking for about 5 seconds then stopping and then doing it again as soon as we had settled back onto the couch and rejoined Alton Brown's discussion of baby back ribs. This went on for a little while. Alton kept assuring me that I could cook ribs without smoking them. The alarms would shriek for a couple of seconds. Fun! I was tempted to just set the damn house on fire in the hopes of them working in reverse and stopping at the first sign of smoke.

We've had this problem before about 6 months ago. That time, the alarm would go off between 2:45 and 3:00 am. Just long enough for me to bolt upright in the bed and begin to plot our exit strategy. I would check on The Kid and sniff around the house for smoke. (Perimenopausal super smelling capabilities come in handy sometimes.) Convinced there was no fire, I'd go back to bed and it would happen again about an hour later. Fun! The electrician we called seemed dumbfounded by the eccentricities of our system. He changed the batteries and said he had "his fingers crossed" that he'd solved our problem. It happened again two nights later and then somehow the problem miraculously went away. Until last night…

So we unhooked all the detectors from the electrical system and took out the back up batteries. The Kid slept through it all. We went to bed and slept the restless sleep of those with no working smoke detectors which was a wee bit better than the sleep of those interrupted at 10 minute intervals by shrieking smoke alarms going off for no reason.

After a quick trip to the store this morning to stock up on 9 volt batteries, we've replaced them all and have reconnected the alarms – so far so good.

Wherein I Mention Throwing Things More Often Than I Care To Admit

I've mentioned before the many, many ways that Karate Day kicks my ass. Today was no exception. As soon as The Kid got home from school and the clock started ticking, I could feel myself getting wound up. (Add to this the fact that I have started my period, which, in my perimenopausal state, is a bit of a miracle and a surprise, particularly considering my last three cycles were 66, 34 and 72 days long respectively. More on this, some other time.)

To make matters worse, the instructor I am the least fond of is back and teaching The Kid's class again. Plus, I had to sit on the floor because all the chairs were taken – and I'm 45, sitting on the floor for an hour makes my back hurt and my feet fall asleep. Poor Lefty walked into the karate school and saw the cinched up look on my face and looked as if he really wanted to turn around and run in the other direction. He is a brave man.

By the time the class was over, my dislike for this instructor plus my simmering hormonal soup had me feeling murderous AND tearful. Trying to get supper on the table, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to cry or throw things. I sat down and ate supper instead. I asked The Kid for extra hugs at bedtime, and he happily obliged. This helped but I am still feeling sort of twisted up and angry and crampy.

Being aware that what your feeling is being ratcheted up by your hormones doesn't make you feel any less like yelling or flinging the cast iron skillet out the window.

Dish Therapy

Not to get all zen on you guys but in the midst of all the Christmas crazy I thought I would share this.

I spent this morning in a frenzy of wrapping and packing and standing in a loooong line at the post office. I was so happy to get rid of those packages, I nearly hugged the nervous post office lady and I think I told her to have a happy holiday about seven times.

Then I came home and did some holiday baking so we would have a treat to take to a party tomorrow night. I was so busy I had this sad little bologna sandwich for lunch, standing up in the kitchen.

I fetched The Kid from school and snacked and homeworked him and then made his favorite dinner which is salmon with wild rice and green beans and by the time dinner rolled around I was feeling pretty miserable and underappreciated because I spent the entire day making Christmas for everyone and who now is making Christmas for me?

Then, after The Kid was tucked in bed, I stood in the kitchen and did the dishes by hand and that simple act of creating a little order in the kitchen sort of erased all that bad feeling and now I'm feeling a little more content. This big ass glass of wine may have helped a little bit too.

Market Day

Yet another day spent helping out at The Kid's school. Today was Market Day, the culmination of the state-mandated lessons on economics. The first graders learned the difference between goods and services, worker and consumer, supply and demand. He had homework with specific examples – his dad definitely provides a service with his teaching, and he decided that I, as a writer, provide both goods and service.

Today the kids got to sell the goods they created in class to other first graders and buy goods from the other classes. They shopped in shifts and everyone took a turn being the workers, actually collecting the money and selling the goods (wooden stick picture frames). Each student was given $20 in play money to spend. They had to make their own spending choices and there was much frustration when they ran out of money, but still had things they wanted to buy. (Join the club, kiddos.)

As you might imagine, it was chaos on a grand scale. I helped out and did the things Mrs. P asked me to. The two other mothers who were there to help stood at the back of the classroom and talked. To each other. Did not even pretend to be helping. I just don't get it. Why bother showing up at all?!

So I put in my hour and a half of chaos (which is really all I can stand – I have a low tolerance level) and came home and nearly fell asleep on the couch. Between the crazy first grade economics lesson and scurrying around putting all the knitting I've done since summer into boxes to send as presents, I am officially out of steam.

I had hoped by the time I got down here some other theme or thought would have worked it's way in here, so that this would sound a little less whiney, but no luck.

Tomorrow – another trip to the post office!

A Rock and a Hard Place

Driving to work this morning I realized one of the things I miss most about being a stay at home mom - other than, of course, being with my lovely child all day long. I miss being completely addicted to The Weather Channel. I would check the weather about 20 times a day. I loved it.

Today, because a big scary looking line of thunderstorms is crouching off to the north and west, I got to have several little Weather Channel fixes before we headed out into our day. I was convinced that it was going to start pouring down rain any moment. I even put off getting dressed thinking that if we had a great big flash flood perhaps I would have to stay home, but about 7 raindrops have fallen since then and right now the sun is shining.

All the rain hysteria led me to drop my son off at his summer program with his swim suit in his tote bag, certain they would not be having the car wash that was scheduled for today. (Don’t ask me about the ethics of using 6 and 7 year olds as car wash labor to raise money for a not for profit. It boggles the mind.) And I forgot his flip flops because I was so certain he wouldn’t need them and now of course I’m wracked with guilt and the image of him walking around in squishy wet sneakers because his neglectful momma is addicted to The Weather Channel.

Also, someone said something snarky in my general vicinity at work this morning and instead of just walking away like I usually do (a lot of snark where I work) I made a rather pointed comment about the speaker. I always think that being hateful back will make me feel better but it never does. It makes me feel worse.

I am caught this morning between the rain (or lack thereof) and my own bad behavior.