This baby child has us all messed up, clenched up, and shutted up. He's asleep right now and I'm quite anxious about the clicking of my keyboard as I type this post. I'm really, really afraid he's going to wake up. It's 5:30 p.m. and this is his second nap. The first one happened around noon and lasted, oh, all of about 15 minutes.
I held him during this nap, knowing that it would be a typically short nap. My plan was to have him sleep as long as he could so that he woke up refreshed. In a good mood, hopefully, and ready to play in one of his baby-toy appartuses. So I didn't put him down. I sacrificed that time that could have been used to defrag my mind in a totally unprecedented bet that he might give me more time upon waking.
Wrong!
So he's asleep now and I said to myself, "Blog. Blog now. Don't hesitate. Don't try to finish the game of Bricks Breaking that you started on Yahoo while you were holding him. Don't go for a bigger score. Open a new tab in IE and get thyself to blogdom."
And here I am. Doing so.
Now, if you read this blog (and I thank the five of you that do), you might have noticed I've been AWOL. In surrendering all my hours to either work, commute, kids and sleeping I've become completely creatively-constipated. Add to this muscle pains and fatigue that doesn't let up, and you get a very, very grumpy me. Waaah.
I haven't had time to write, can't focus on reading, can't go be all crafty or embellish items (I've threatened to start decorating the baby with glitter and beads), and am unable to doodle little happy swirls and make crazy signs. I knew this was becoming a problem when, on my way to my local Starbucks-mothership drive thru this a.m., I passed over the highway and noticed with entirely too much delight that the local gangsters had tagged the highway brick walls again. It was very circular and bubbly...much like the design of cars manufactured in the late nineties. Biters.
Anyway...I was delighted and then I was jealous. Effing men, OF COURSE, they have time to be creative. Envy was followed by what I thought was a profound idea, "Shit, I'll just go join a gang. Then I'll get some creative time." Um, yeah. Well, luckily, my gatekeeper of sanity is barely operational but did manage to catch this stellar idea and veto it before I started an all out Google search and Craigslist scour down of any local gang that might be in need of a 30-year-old, white, mother of five to round out their posse. You know, in the name of being an equal-opportunity group.
Hey, that leads me to wonder, why don't gangs get sued for not allowing other races in? Other clubs would.
Although, even if they did let me in, I couldn't join. Because I find gangs hilarious. Now, before you get in a tizzy, let me qualify that statement. I find gangs that operate in the suburbs hilarious.
We were coming home from Oakland (where I work, where I was born, where things are a bit more rough in the 'hood) and were arriving into our little piece of suburbia when I passed a silver sedan with a driver who had a red bandana pulled up over his nose and tied around the back of his head. He was leaving a (gasp) strip mall and was rebellious enough not too signal his turn out into traffic.
And in full view of him (who was looking at me, wondering why I wasn't quaking in his presence and giving him the right of way) and his homie riding shotgun, I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it. I just couldn't. It was too funny. And before you say, "Don't worry, they probably didn't know you were laughing at them," let me stop you---they did know, because as my head flew back in guffaws, my right arm extended forward and my index finger popped out and pointed directly at their financed vehicle and their "rebel" driver. Oh God...just remembering the whole thing brings a smile to my face.
You can't be hard in suburbia. Skyler's seventh-grade math teacher told his students, "You can't be a gangbanger if your mom still drops you off at school, " and I would concur.
Now, though, I've pulled the tail of the tiger enough to know that they may have gotten offended. They may have followed me home. So I kept an eye on my rearview mirror the rest of the way home. But like Skyler related when I told him the story, I shouldn't worry about a drive-by pillow fight.
True that.
At any rate, today I have blogged and I feel a bit more of me returning. It's like a homecoming. I'm almost teary-eyed. Which reminds me....time for my anti-depressants and birth control.
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