Just when you thought it was safe...

Having adopted this new mindset for myself, I no longer harbor feelings of ill-will for my fellow humans...  ah, let me rephrase this...  

I try very hard not to harbor ill will for any fellow human beings.  Most of the time my sarcastic side pops up and like the cartoon devil on the shoulder, says, "Except those assholes who really deserve it" or "Unless they cut me off in traffic" or some other little witticism.  However, those who I find most difficult to forgive or get along with, or basically keep from getting pissed off by, are those closest to me.  I do not for once feel that I am alone in this endeavor.  Not for a second.  I assume I am fairly normal.  Of course, I have been wrong before.  But I digress.

Today has been very trying for those of us - meaning me - who are just trying to get by without hating anyone or smacking the shit out of anyone.  There are days - and this was not one of them - where I should not have gotten out of bed that morning, where every movement I make was doomed to failure.  Last Thursday for example.  There are other days when life seems an adventure and a delight sipped on the verandah.  This was not one of those either.  It was irritating in a minor way.  I had planned on making some calls to try to find a venue for my new writers' group to meet in an accessible location and some other personal business.  I did get some calls from some friends I had not talked to in a while, and that was great.  And my oldest got a school award which was nice, but later maligned by a smarmy comment of St Timothy of the Besotted Barrel.  

So what is my real issue? Can it be the three floors I have had to clean after a three year old after 10 pm this evening?  Can it be the demanding tones employed by the prepubescent princess of the household?  Or can it be the smarmy comment or my exhaustion and resulting inability to come up with a smarmier retort?  

After analyzing the data carefully, I have determined that the real crux of the issue is that these days are occurring now, and not back before I sat on the cushion, so I could have just smacked the shit out of all of them, confessed it on Saturday afternoon in the wooden closet, and then emerged to greet another week of living with my family in the suburbs, slate wiped clean, no harm, no foul.  Damn.  

Hope springs eternal...

Hope springs eternal.  The lying sack of shit.  Actually today I have vacillated between panic - what am I going to do when I grow up (as I sneak toward 40) - and adventure - this is my chance to reinvent myself, my role, the rules, what I contribute to the world, and all that jazz.  

It is a beautiful clear day, clear enough that I am spending the late afternoon with my laptop, my youngest and my dog on the back deck of my house, enjoying a chilly breeze and my alabaster legs are making their spring debut.  I am further scandalizing the neighbors by wearing the backless shirt, so the dragon tat is on display, no doubt scaring the Girl Scout leader who interrupted my knitting earlier with an invite to the PTA meeting as well as the suburban lesbians we call neighbors.  They are actually awesome, the best neighbors we have had, but there is the shock value which I did not know we possessed until they put up a tall privacy fence only across the back of their property so as to not have to look at me or my progeny, or maybe it is my inert drunken husband, St Tim of the Pub.  I dunno.  Or it could be my cultivated approach to gardening last year, which was let it all come up and see what grows there.  This year I vow to do better, and without anyone else making my schedule, I think I may be able to pull it off.  

So anyway, back to the idea of hope.  It is the thing with wings.  Yeah, I did the obligatory sophomore project on Dickinson, we've established that.  Unfortunately, the wings are kinda manic and fly more like a drunken sailor.  Sailors. you say, pilot ships, not planes.  I say, my point exactly.  

So I spent the day hatching plans to rid my home office of the clinical and bring life and thought and organic feeling back into it.  LITERATURE rather than life care plans.  And all the bureaucratic crap that goes with it.  Only planning however, not doing.  Never lifted a finger.  And maybe that's why I am out on the deck overlooking the backyard, a freshly mown lawn yet overgrown flower and vegetable beds.  

It's time to reclaim my voice.  No one can take it. No one took it.  I just have to find it.  Underneath the crap.  And it's all mine.  The voice as well as the crap.  

Until tomorrow.  Thanks for reading.  

All dressed down and nowhere to go....

The lovely thing about inaction is that it is seductive.  By this I mean it is much easier to put off til tomorrow what I should have done yesterday. Especially when it comes to housecleaning.  Whoever said today is the first day of the rest of your life was just trying to depress me.  I mean, damn.  

Life here in the seventh circle is underwhelming and mind-numbing.  I have a vast array of exciting options available to me.  I could clean the den for the eighth time in 24 hours.  I could try to get creative as I, the vegetarian cook, whip up another meal for the carnivores in my house.  Or I could get in my car and drive far, far away and not come home again.  Like the mother in The Hours, or Sylvia Plath lighting her oven...  

Now that wasn't nice.  I am consistent in that if nothing else.  I know why the praying mantis decapitates her mate after copulation and why hamsters eat their young.  They are smarter than me.