Recently in Life in the Kingdom Category

They will not stop sending catalogs to my house! Despite multiple phone calls, online requests (which they do not make easy unlike other responsible companies who send catalogs), and even sending them a real letter via the U.S. Postal Service for heaven's sake!

For over two years I have worked on this project, to no avail.

They are dead to me.

(p.s. Yes, I have previously purchased Dells when I was in charge of purchasing computers for a nonprofit. No more, I tell you.)

(p.p.s. This is what happens when you buy a house that was formerly inhabited by college students. They are on ALL the mailing lists.)

(p.p.s. Also, the graffiti they drew in the upstairs hallway will bleed through the shoddy paint job that the house fixer uppers did when they were getting it ready to sell. There is leftover KILZ in the garage, and now we know why they had some left over. They didn't use it! Someday, if you are very good, I will take pictures of this graffiti and post them on the blog.)

(p.p.p.s. Did I mention we also found an entire pane of broken glass in a flowerbed? And then we found another one? Like, they would break windows and never pick it up, just put a new one in.)

(p.p.p.p.s. I bet the people at Dell would do THE EXACT SAME THING. Bastards.)

The Princess, driving: Okay, that wasn't so bad, thank goodness there isn't anyone else on the access road.

C-Man, riding shotgun: Yeah, I think the most difficult part of this is going to be getting in and out of the parking lot.

Ahead of us, an ambulance rolls slowly out of the parking lot exit, then does a U-Turn and drives right back into the entrance.

C-Man: SEE?!

Last night, I turned out the lights at 10:56pm and fell asleep fairly quickly.

I woke up at 1:15am and have been awake ever since.

2010 has kicked my ass in January and February, and I have had it.

I'm also up to here with my current attack of insomnia, the next installment in a lifelong battle. (How it didn't flare up and kill me when Boy Detective was waking me up every night multiple times for the first 18 months of his life is totally beyond me.)

I have also had it with my mad procrastination, which I often blame on the ass-kicking and the insomnia, but is really just a personality flaw.

So in March, I am not going to take it anymore, even when the enemy is me. The following things are all stressing me out so much that I can barely think, and they must be eliminated:

1. Insomnia
2. Clutter in sewing room
3. Massive clutter in guest room
4. Even more massive clutter in garage
5. Other random clutter all over the damn place
6. Disarray of finances
7. Chore-doing all being organized and tracked by me
8. Meal planning all being organized by me and MIL
9. Lack of time away, alone, without a two year old climbing on my body or shrieking "Mommy"
10. Stuffed full inbox
11. Stuffed full feed reader
12. Disarray of blogs
13. Using work to avoid life

I am going to smash it all.

I am dimly aware that embarking on a self-imposed tyrannical large project that requires doing a bunch of stuff (beginning while my husband is laid up in bed and during the same month as SXSW) may not be the kindest thing given how tired I am, but I don't know how to rest with all of this hanging over my head.

When I'm done, I might be just as miserable, but at least things will be tidier.

I do!

You know what shouldn't be in a computer?

A virus.

Especially because when the virus thing happens, you realize that in order to reinstall Windows your husband has to give a guy from a Craigslist ad $40 cash in a parking lot (get your mind out of the gutter) for a Windows XP CD with Service Pack 2 (totally legal I swear) to replace the perfectly legal copy you already own which only has Service Pack 1 which isn't good enough to run BootCamp on the iMac AND you also have to go the hardware store and get a plastic putty knife to open the damn iMac to upgrade the RAM that your husband ordered off the internet AND get a copy of Safari 5.2.Squillion (or whatever version has the BootCamp drivers) from the Apple store in the mall where they only check people out with iPhones instead of cash registers so he can't find anyone to take his goddamn money for like half an hour...

...all of which will be useless if while the iMac is open, your husband can't figure out why the CD drive stopped accepting CDs a few weeks ago and fix it.

Aside from virii, you know what else shouldn't be in a computer, and more specifically in the CD drive?

A shard broken off the edge of a melamine plate with Raggedy Ann and Andy on it.

(I'll give you two guesses how that happened.)

This is what I have learned from this episode:

1. The year 2010 is sucking just as much as 2009.
2. Although I claim to hate Bill Gates quite a lot, I am willing to contort my life to an amazing degree in order to avoid the stress of starting to use the perfectly workable and perhaps superior operating system that came with the iMac in the first place - so I may in fact need professional help of some kind.

And then Boy Detective got a sinus infection, started taking Amoxicillin, broke out into a ghastly red rash all over his body, and when the pediatrician saw him for the third time in a week, he said "and that cough sounds a little barky, like it's turning into croup" and sent us home with a prescription for steroids. My boss said "it may make him a little wiggy" and I said "he's 2.5, how will i tell?" and she said "noted" but OMG HE'S COMPLETELY FREAKING OUT and spent a lot of storytime today TRYING TO BITE HIS GRANDMOTHER.

Did I mention C-Man went out of town today for the weekend?

The End.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to C-Man that I was out of maxi-pads and needed to run over to CVS and pick some up. He asked "Run over there in what?" and I said "Huh?" and then I remembered that we had no working vehicle. Blarg!

C-Man then proved that I was right to marry him (even though he is a lawyer) by concluding the only reasonable thing to do was for him to walk 20+ minutes up and down hills under a highway and through a dark neighborhood to CVS and bring back whatever I needed. Extraordinarily generous for a man with a bad knee.

I concluded differently. My solution was to go across the street to the house where several polite and pleasant young women live and ask if anyone could spare a couple of items to get me through the night until C-Man's mom brought her working vehicle back and I could drive to the store.

(Please note that the solution of going back in time to purchase a house within more reasonable walking distance of a grocery store or drugstore - like everywhere else I lived for the decade before we moved in here - did not seem feasible that evening.)

C-Man was not quite aghast, but he was quite concerned that this would be terribly embarrassing for me. He reiterated his willingness to make the trek. I told him that I thought he could probably go to the Whip-In, which is far closer, but that the house across the street was closer still and it was really no big deal.

"It's a girl thing!" I insisted, "It's fine!"

Indeed it was fine. Girlfriend across the street gave me several each of two different kinds and even apologized that she didn't have a bag for me to put everything in. I went home and said "see?" and he said "well okay then" and I went along my merry way thinking that other woman would have done as I did and C-Man was just out of the loop because he's a guy.

Then I told Grace, and she said "Wow, I would have found that really embarrassing."

I was shocked.

So, women of the internet, tell me, what would you have done?

I will not add a folder for feeds in my Google Reader called Comics.

I will not I will not I will not.

Fuck.

I'm not sure I can account for all of the seven hours I mentioned in my post about how I am being a sullen procrastinator rather than a list-item-checker-offer these days, but at least I did manage to slay the following dragons. And I slept a little extra 'cause of the being sick for almost two weeks.

Dragon the first: Sweaters dropped off at dry cleaner, where the first thing I saw was a sign saying you can now drop off and pick up your dry cleaning at a laundromat about 2 seconds from my nanny / mother in law's house and wouldn't it have been great to know that before I spent 20 minutes driving to my dry cleaner because they're the only non-toxic one in the city? Oh well. I borrowed her car to do it, and she has a nice stereo, so it's fine.

Dragon the second: Shoes retrieved from Payless (did you know their website offers free shipping to any local store?), meaning I now have two pairs of closed-toed shoes for winter, which is great, because we have winter in February here in Austin and now I don't have to wear socks with non-Birkenstock sandals. I have low fashion standards for myself, but not that low. Okay they were that low in December when it was really cold. Sorry. At least I kept the socks and sandals the same color.

Dragon the third: Dentist appointment made for self, so I can once again be told that my teeth are in great shape and they barely had to clean them but I should floss anyway. This will motivate me to floss about five times between then and my next visit.

Dragon the fourth: Next pediatrician's appointment made to follow up on nagging Boy Detective possible health issue about which I am becoming more anxious as months go by without answers although in all likelihood it is nothing to be concerned about. If my mother were a mean person, she would be laughing right now and yelling "See? Payback for everything you put me through! Pneumonia at eighteen months of age, who ever heard of such a thing?"

A list was also made for C-Man of all the C-Manly things that need doing, which I expect him to graciously tackle as soon as he isn't (a) getting up at 3am to do database failovers and (b) in pain pretty much 24 hours a day. So, possibly 2017. To be fair, I put items relating to getting him out of pain at the top of his list, so here's hoping.

When I first picked this post title, it was going to be a post about our new car. In December, our old car decided to need repairs worth the equivalent of its blue book value. Since we had already spent more than that on repairs earlier in the year, and the car had 190,000 miles on it, we decided it was time to call it a day. The tale of how we came to purchase a cute! new! blue! Honda Fit became less enjoyable, though, when a week later someone who owes me a decent chunk of money emailed out of the blue and told me he was declaring bankruptcy.

When one gets complacent about the behavior of others, it does tend to bite one in the ass.

So the post celebrating the new car was scrapped, partly because the bloom was off the rose and partly because I know too many people who are like "Well if the car is that spacious, can I come live in it when my family doesn't have a home anymore BECAUSE WE ARE POOR AND THE ECONOMY SUCKS." And while losing another $6000 to a bad relationship that has been over for years is highly vexing, the sacrifices we will be making to compensate for that hole in our budget are more like a conference C-Man wanted to attend and any furniture for the next year or two, rather than health care or heating our home.

The title, though, This Year's Girl, applies equally well to another post that had been percolating which is this one: who the fuck am I now and how do I get back to being a person that I like being?

I'm not sure how I worked 60 hours a week at two different jobs in the fall of 2008 while I had a one year old who wasn't sleeping through the night. Did that really happen? Oh right, see new car, money for, not from lottery winnings. (We use that money for something else.)

But who was that woman who could manage those two schedules, dress up in suits a few days a week, do extensive public speaking in a professional environment, parent 3-4 hours a day and get up several times at night? Was that me? Really?

My working hours are now capped at 35 per week, and I have another adult in the house who is paid to take care of the child for about 48 hours a week. Let's say that 4 of those 48 hours he's actually hanging out with me, and 2 of those hours I'm showering since I often haven't done that by the time she gets here, but that still leaves a gap of 7 hours.

I know how much I could get done at work in 7 hours. A ton. I dream big dreams of the day when I may be allowed to work an extra 7 hours some week because there is a project that just needs doing. I look at the to-do list for my life for one week and surely in 7 hours, I should be able to knock off a massive amount of stuff.

The truth is, I don't really want to. I don't care anymore.

I remember when I liked to-do lists. Now I gaze at them with a mix of dull hatred and resignation. The resignation is because I will inevitably do those things since there is no way to permanently escape, but I will not do them so quickly that they will get off the list any time before next month. Or the next. Or possibly next year. I'm annoyed that those things aren't done yet, but it gives me almost no satisfaction to cross them off, so I avoid them.

Who is that person?

Our guest room and half our garage are immobilized by stuff I'm supposed to be turning into money on Craigslist, as a way to help someone else. It arrived in July. Of 2008. I have gotten rid of probably a couple hundred cubic feet of it and made her some much-needed cash, and yet there's always more STUFF and my fantasies about a helicopter crashing in our back yard revolve around figuring out how to make the crash destroy the guest room and garage simultaneously without harming the kitchen, which is between them. Then again, the kitchen could use some rearranging. How long is the typical helicopter anyway?

My sewing machine has not been set up properly on its table since March of 2009, though I have used it once on the kitchen table. My sewing room is full of bags of outgrown kid clothes I need to hand down to two women I know who have younger boy babies, but I can't seem to get that organized.

The dog's nails aren't being trimmed, the backyard has piles of weeds that need to be sacked up, and there are new ones growing. I can't even manage to email someone back about taking away the godforsaken hot tub whose only purpose is to collect filthy water. I've had an energy audit on the house that produced a list of next steps, none of which I've given any thought to since the guy was here four months ago. Except when they emailed me a followup and I was like "oh leave me the hell alone." (In my head, not in an email.)

I have a pretty wool sweater that I needed to take to the dry cleaner in March of 2009 that has never gone.

I'm pretty sure I should have paid estimated taxes in 2009 and I'm going to get hit with a penalty, but the CPA who did our taxes last year has pissed me off at least twice since then so I just didn't bother to deal with it.

Who? The fuck? Am I?

I think my ability to blame the kid is coming to an end. I am no longer holding the baby most of the day and haven't been since August of 2008, so I really could pick up my own dirty socks and put them in the laundry basket rather than walk by them FIFTY MORE TIMES. I have more time than any of the working parents I know, more money too, money that I use to pay people a higher hourly rate than I make so they can clean the bathrooms and mow the lawn so that I have more time.

(Side note: I have only ever mowed a lawn once in my life. Our front lawn, which is a hill, with the push-mower C-Man bought because he was supposed to mow the lawn. Which is a hill, and he has a bad knee. After I did it once, we started to pay people to mow the lawn. The time I save by doing this is the time spent arguing with C-Man about what we're going to do about the lawn so the neighbors don't call the city on us, which is why I was particularly aggrieved when I hired a lawn company and then had to argue with them regularly about when they were supposed to show up.)

We had a lot of crap to deal with in 2009 that we did not have in 2008, which is to be expected when a high-needs young adult moves into your house for half the year and spends the other half needing assistance from your child care provider because now she's living over there. The schedule disruptions seemed endless, the drama was often times overwhelming, and countless hours went to discussion, planning, reacting, and talking to professionals about how best to manage things. C-Man had multiple health episodes which limited his parenting participation for several days each time and required multiple physical therapy appointments. The (only) car (we own) broke down twice. Our washer broke down. My relaxing family trip to Colorado to visit my sister sent all of us home with colds. My relaxing trip to BlogHer ended up with me putting a friend in a cab to the hospital. My relaxing weekend getaway with C-Man was prefaced by cutting my foot open in the shower so badly that I couldn't put weight on it for several weeks.

Added up, though, I still feel like it isn't enough of an explanation, like I've just become a different person since we moved into this house. A person who does the minimum usually, with spurts of manic activity when the stress is unbearable - activity never sufficient to solve underlying problems.

I am convinced that many of the physical clutter issues in my home could be managed more successfully if we owned more than three laundry baskets. Laundry baskets are wonderful for turning chaos into order, but we only have three, and often one of them is being used as a sleigh, basket under a hot air balloon (don't try this at home, many children are too heavy to carry around in laundry baskets, you might pull something, not that I would know), garbage truck, or ladder. And then one of them is invariably full of clean clothes that god forbid someone take 2 minutes to put away, because I am my own worst enemy.

Somehow, though, I doubt extra laundry baskets will make up for my general lack of giving a damn anymore. You want someone to care, make a plan, and get up on it?

You need to talk to last year's girl.