December 21, 2011

• Out of Control

  I am feeling on high alert these days - this year - trying to figure out the next thing that will go wrong - I am experiencing anxiety and panic attacks - the feeling that you don't know what is going to happen next.

  The kids are in finals now, and that's not enough, my daughter has to have an appendectomy.  And that's not enough.  I am in the basement and hear dripping water while my son is showering, open the crawl space and see water.  My other daughter cut her hand with an exacto knife during her art final and needed stitches.

  I called into my office yet again today to say that I would not be in so I could wait for the plumbers.  And then the plumbers were at my house for FOUR HOURS trying to fix the broken shower drain.  I texted my husband to tell him that I thought it would be cheaper to just move.

  But the last day of finals is tomorrow.  And my daughter's appendectomy scar is healing well and she did her portfolio presentations (she goes to a science focus school, so it's a little different than regular high school), so she only needs to take an incomplete in her Advanced Alegbra class.  And my office staff is friendly and helpful and sympathetic.  Also, my house is super, super clean since I spent four hours hanging around while the plumbers did their thing.

  So I think this all explains why, after my afternoon hearing, I stopped at the nursery and bought a flipping Christmas tree - a huge, huge fir tree which was, of course, on sale.  I drove it home and stuffed it in water just as the teen came through the living room.

  "Oh my God, mom, this tree is obnoxious," my teen said as she surveyed the giant tree.

  "Well, yeah, it kinda is," I said.

  "What are you going to put on it?"

  "I dunno.  Lights?  Paper chains?  Cookies?"

  "Ok, Laura Ingalls," she said as she breezed out of the room.

  My work day ended with a conference call about budget cuts and the dire situation of legal services for poor people, not to mention the dire situation of the staff who help them.  I need to make paper chains.  I have a few hours to myself this evening while the kids have dinner with their dad and Bill picks his kids up for their holiday visit with us.  I am going to have Craft Time and decorate my tree.  When the kids get home I will shuffle them in and out of the shower, which now drains through a pipe and not into my basement, and quiz Spanish verb conjugation and then we will sit in the beauty of the glowing tree.  Or at least that is the plan.  Best laid and all that.

  • 5:51 pm
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