1. Done sorta
2. Done
3. Done
4. Done
5. Done
6. In process
7. Done
8. Done
9. Yeah yeah yeah
10. Oh yeeeurgh. Yes. Also, dishwasher run.
11. Nope
12. Yes
13. Tomorrow
14. Tomorrow, by necessity
Oh, and I should pack the lad’s stuff out of kindness. Yeehaw. Jesus christ I hate traveling these days.
So, never again will I write ‘Sean is perfectly healthy’, because the gods will take that as a sign of hubris, you see, and Sean will wake up from his evening nap with his eye swollen and welded shut and violent green pus dripping from it. (Acute, sudden onset conjunctivitis. Aka, Pinkeye FROM HELL. Pinkeye with a Mommy and a Brood. Intelligent, Undead Pinkeye.) The ER (yes, the ER. Because when it’s 8 at night and your child looks like a refugee from the set of a cheap ass zombie movie, you go) gave us a tube of antibiotic ointment with instructions to hold Sean perfectly still, pull down the lower lid of his eye, and carefully apply an even line of the ointment in along the inner rim of the lower lid, without touching the eyeball with the tube (lest we gouge his eye or contaminate the tube).
Sure thing, chief. Will DCFS bust me if I tranq gun him first? Duct tape? The hell?! It took his father, me, and a burly male nurse to steel cage death match Sean when he was an hour past bedtime and wiped out in order to put the stuff in, I couldn’t imagine doing this three times a day without bondage gear. Fortunately, the next day our pediatrician railed against the ER and prescribed drops, which are much easier. Which is a good thing, as I’ll be managing solo for much of tomorrow.
Months ago, the plan was Sean and I would go with the Lad to his major conference, which starts tomorrow in a nice foreign land which we are considering moving to depending upon how the election goes. Then the schedule for the conference was released (hellish) and we traveled with Sean to and from DC (more hellish), and the Lad became skittish as a fundamentalist in the Castro at the thought of trying to deal with child while being Mr. Professional- and really, who can blame him?- and so the plan changed. Tomorrow at O-Dark-Thirty (seriously), he and LPG take off for the airport, and will meet up in Chicago with Matilda, and all three will sally forth to ForeignLand and the conference- all three of the, have presentations, they all got accepted. Midafternoon, Jim, our friendly limo driver, will pick me and Sean up and we fly off to Chicago, and we spend the week at my mom’s. Yes, I’m takin the hit for the team and doing the Great Grandparents Visit so the Lad doesn’t have to. The upside here is that Mom will be taking us out to excellent dinners and letting me raid her wine cellar.
However, this means we’re dealing with the lad’s usual travel stress, the lad’s conference stress, the lad’s stress about me traveling, my stress about me traveling, and packing for two entirely different trips. Really, it’s a wonder we didn’t kill each other yesterday, though as I ate my caramel apple I confess I did think idly about stabbing Stressboy with the stick. To the Lad’s mind, everything must be done by tonight. By my mind, I have till lunch tomorrow! Which is not to say that’s enough time, I have to:
1. Work
2. Do load of kid laundry
3. Do load of our laundry
4. Haul out suitcases
5. Pull out all of my clothes, Sean’s clothes
6. Assemble Backpack of Kid Management on Plane
7. Clean out and restock diaper bag
8. Print out all travel docs
9. Did I mention work?
10. Clean out fridge
11. Empty all trash
12. Hit grocery store fast
13. UPS stuff to office
14. Pack cold bag o food and drugs for kidlet
And 18 trillion other things I’m sure I’m forgetting.
Meh.
How about a candy dish of zithromax?
Groan. I am sick. I am still sick. I have been sick for a week and a half, and just when I think I’m finally winning, the forces of Muculor, Dark Prince of Phlegm and his asshole sidekick Athelred, Destroyer of Alveoli discover new frontiers of my body to infect. It’s like a scooby doo episode where the gang and the bad guy are running in and out of doors in a long hallway. Sinuses! No lungs! no throat! No, back to sinuses! All of which equates to my sounding like the bastard child of Lestat and Jessica Rabbit these days. so good for sounding professional on the phone, I tell you.
Sean, of course, after the Festival of High Fever And Discharge and Wheezing on Cue for the Pediatrian and such, is fine. I suppose I should be grateful he has his father’s constitution, but it means the little darling incubates germs from daycare in his squirmy little body, subjecting them to hardcore Darwinian Selection, after which only the Strongest Deadliest Most Hardy germs survive, at which point he passes them on to me. WHY did I become a parent, someone remind me?
On the good side, Sean is settling into daycare. We no longer have the hysterical crying when I drop him off, and when I pick him up he’s happy to see me and gets testy only if I take too long (in his estimation) getting his stuff. If I am taking too long, he will start to climb up my legs like a spider monkey and pointedly wave goodbye to the teacher. Clearly he has inherited my sense of subtlety. He has a roster of art projects which I look at and am not quite sure how my crayon-eating 17 month old has managed to execute, unless I drop him off and he suddenly becomes posessed by the ambient spirit of Matisse (though lately he’s really in a Pollack phase). He is seriously into building and blocks, and spends every evening playing legos with dad. Which leads us to gratiutious funny child incident, before I drag myself back off to my sickbed.
The other day I picked him up and his daily report made no sense- it looked like he had eaten three snacks (normally, they have one, though if the kids get peckish around 5:15 they’ll give a second small snack to em). Well, it turns out the kitchen had fucked up making rice krispie treats, adding too MUCH marshmellow, so the treats were actually too sticky for the children to eat. They make the kids sit at little tables, on little chairs, and they eat off of paper placemats, and the paper was sticking to the treats. “One child ate the paper, at which point we decided to substitute in a new snack.” the Director informed me. “Let me guess, that was Sean, right?”
No, the Director informed me. My genius child stole the treats from everyone else, pushed them together like sticky duplos to build a tower, and then ran around attempting to adhere the Tower of Rice Krispie Treats to other children.
Finally dumped photos off of camera. A few snaps.
Earlier this summer Sean was obsessed with Leather Pants Grrrl’s black skullcap. One day, he stole it. And promptly looked like a Deadhead.
We took him to a hay bale maze a few weekends ago. He promptly attempted to scale the maze instead of run through it, leading to us having to herd him through.
And last, his new love: Duplos with Dad after Dinner:
It starts with
One thing / I don’t know why
It doesn’t even matter how hard you try
Keep that in mind / I designed this rhyme
To explain in due time
I sat at the stoplight yesterday, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, as I waited to make the left onto 135th to take Sean to daycare. I had been studiously avoiding the news, still not wanting to hear the pundits spin, dissect, analyze the VP debate, but it hadn’t been enough to avoid the trumpeting of the CIA report that Iraq in fact had no weapons of mass destruction and Paul Bremer’s public declaration that we had never had enough troops in Iraq to secure it post-invasion. I had been head-in-the-sanding, not out of denial, but because my rage meter was at full and any more input might tip me over the fucking edge. Stuck at the stoplight, Sean cooing as he played in his carseat, I fixedly focused my mind on other things. Online stuff. Work contract bids. My rage and exhaustion and work have me so tapped writing did not occur to me.
Then there was dead air on the radio. For a few seconds. Which given the caliber of the radio stations around here is not surprising. The first few telltale notes of a song started, and at the precise moment their simple, unsettling tones began to echo, 4 military helicopters emerged over the treeline. Swept low in formation over suburbia. Menaced us in our cars. And I couldn’t stick my head in the sand. I couldn’t escape my anger.
It starts with one thing.
An idea.
A lie.
A fervent desire.
And it promulgates. Infects. Addles and corrupts, infests and rots. A single idea, seized upon by a few. Nurtured and coddled, a game set in motion. Opportunities seized and taken advantage of. Welcome to group think.
All I know
time is a valuable thing
Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings
Watch it count down to the end of the day
The clock ticks life away
It’s so unreal
Over a thousand soldiers’ lives have ticked away (as of today, 1209 coalition forces). Over 150 people kidnapped, 27 killed. Over 7,000 coalition forces wounded. By some estimates, 15,000 dead Iraqis.
Didn’t look out below
Watch the time go right out the window
Trying to hold on / but didn’t even know
Wasted it all just to
Watch you go
I kept everything inside and even though I tried / it all fell apart
What it meant to me / will eventually / be a memory / of a time when I tried
so hard
I am a pessimist. A pessimist who doesn’t want to know. I am grim-faced and full of bitterness. I have no faith in the electoral process in this country. Much as I want to be hooRAH! Vote! Vote! Vote! I am so disillusioned and paranoid- thank you, Florida- that I am convinced that an election can readily be manipulated, no matter how angry 18-34 year olds turn out and vote. I have lost all faith in my country that we are so blind that we are not en masse standing up and shrieking. The 16 page report in the New York Times, clearly and damningly laying out how the administration knowingly ignored significant evidence that contradicted the claims of a single CIA analyst that the aluminum tubes Iraq was obtaining were intended for nuclear arms- a major part of the administration’s public rationale for invading Iraq- seems to have appeared and had no impact. The DC spinmeisters are seizing on lines in a 913 page document that states Iraq had no WMDs to support the administration contention that Saddam intended to start a WMD program again and so had to be invaded. Jesus H. Fucking Christ, are we so fucking blind? Does Mount St. Helens need to explode in a hail of ash that spells out “It Was A Giant Lie, We Had No Reason To Do It” for people to get it?
Things aren’t the way they were before
You wouldn’t even recognize me anymore
Not that you knew me back then
But it all comes back to me
In the end
Our economy is on tenterhooks. Our military is stretched thin. Our reputation among other countries is shattered. Our civil liberties are trampled upon. We write our science grants now to skirt the conservative leanings of the funders, knowing projects about AIDS and evolution are likely to get tossed. Our tax dollars go to fund ‘faith-based initiatives’ which are in direct conflict with many American’s religious beliefs. Our media has a rollicking case of whiplash, as the New York Times and Washington Post slowly unearth themselves and begin reporting honestly, appoint ombudsmen to write columns detailing where, at the beginning of the war, they were lead astray in their reporting; Fox ‘Fair and Balanced’ News retracts fake stories about Kerry post debate. Things are not the way they were before; this is not my America.
I am ashamed to fly an American flag on my house. It represents a country I do not know. I cannot believe that I have just stated that, but there it is.
I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn’t even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
But in the end
It doesn’t even matter
I have lost my faith in my country.
I have lost my belief that it will all be okay.
I will drop my child off at daycare, come November 2, and hightail it to the polls, so I may vote.
And I am so bitter. And so weary. And so shell-shocked at how one idea was the seed for so much manipulation and machination, and shattered a world, forever changed the course of history, that I cannot help but think that in the end, every yard sign I put up and argument I make and the vote I cast really doesn’t even matter.
But I have to try.
An entry in Music for the Masses, a collab run by the lovely and talented Pineapple Girl. Please remember, All lyrics are the property and copyright of their respective owners. All lyrics are provided for educational purposes and personal use only.
As if we needed more proof, I am insane. Why?
It is October 2.
And I am thinking about Christmas cookies.
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