• Previous posts

  • Aging is for the weak, and everyone else
  • More short cuts
  • Smol Ketchups
  • What’s the opposite of green juice and deep breathing
  • Living through it all online
  • The Change
  • 18
  • Ok but ALSO:
  • Midlife POV
  • Influence and Dooce
  • Horse therapy
  • You can’t go home again
  • Obsolescence
  • Before and after
  • A cringe confession on friendship

Archives from 2002-2006

Whatever virus Riley has seems to be of a particularly stubborn ilk, because it’s been nearly a week and he’s still hacking and snotting and running a comes-and-goes fever that periodically transforms his personality into an event horizon whose escape velocity traps all light, happiness, and parental will to live. Once the Motrin kicks in he’s pretty much good to go, but in those dark soulless moments between dosings of berry-flavored miracle elixir it’s basically like living with the world’s most sullen 30-pound teenager, being as how he hates EVERYTHING and its ASS FACE.

It’s weird and sad to experience such a different side of my own kid and even while I’m struggling to be patient and understand this has to do with not feeling well I found myself nearly weeping to JB last night about how upset I’ll be if Riley turns out to be the kind of person who doesn’t care about anything and I don’t care WHAT he cares about as long as he cares about something, please god just let him be passionate instead of sitting around RAGGING ON EVERYTHING like some kind of MISERABLE A-HOLE, and whooaahhhhh there hoss, maybe wait until the kid’s temperature drops below 101 before deciding his future as a nihilist?

In the meantime, Dylan has picked up nearly all the good-attitude slack and has abandoned the nonstop tantrums in favor of an adorable streak of babbling, scampering, and generally staying greatly amused by almost anything, as demonstrated in this video:

The only constant in parenting is the inconsistency, and you’d sure think I’d know that by now but I keep falling into the trap of thinking that whatever stage we’re in is going to last forever, even with so much empirical evidence to the contrary. I think this is my biggest shortcoming in motherhood, that I’m so easily overwhelmed by the moment and so often unable to remember that it is, in fact, a moment, soon to be gone forever.

I was kind of hoping for a nice upbeat week after the drudgery of last weekend’s endless traveling and myriad associated ass-pains, but first JB came down with a miserable cold (which came on at his mother’s house and I had to keep reminding myself that when my sons are grown men I too will probably still think of them as my baybees and may even possibly fret to their wives over their every sniffle and moan but still, there is only so much eye-rolling a person can be expected to hold at bay before they experience something like a total system meltdown complete with a sarcastic diatribe about how I’d spent the entire night with 9 and 1 dialed on my cell phone, breathlessly waiting to hit that second 1 the moment his condition deteriorated, IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR) and has left him a hacking, ague-ridden husk of his former self, unable even to muster the energy to ask me if I needed my own temperature taken orally or via backdoor meatstick; then Riley got sick as hell and ran a scary fever and couldn’t sleep and oh yeah, barfed all over the backseat of my car; then I had a routine checkup for Dylan this morning that resulted in an unexpected ear infection diagnosis and a motherfucking amoxicillian prescription, AKA the Pink Stuff You’re Supposed to Get Down a Resistant Baby’s Gullet Twice a Day for How Long Wait Say That Again Are You SHITTING ME TEN DAYS?

Hi! Dosing syringes make me puke, so THIS ought to be interesting!

I remember when I thought it was stressful to go to the pediatrician when I had one child. Who was in a carseat. Now I have to keep one eye on Riley who’s beelining for the chalkboard in order to scribble giant screechy letter Rs all over it while yelling LOOK MOMMY R FOR RILEY AND ALSO ROCKET!! and the other on Dylan who oscillates between staring openmouthed at the fishtank and making a break for the front door because hey you know what’s more fun than a giant room full of unfamiliar toys a BUSY PARKING LOT.

Riley seems to be on the mend, but his mood is fractious and he’s about one serotonin level away from filming himself doing the ugly cry about how we all just need to leave Britney alone because she’s not well right now.

I only made it to work one day this week while we’re in the midst of a busy project, my house looks like it should be featured on one of those Dateline specials about pathological hoarding, and I suppose I should be happy it’s Friday but all I can think is we have the whole weekend to go still and I am le tired.

So! I’m holding out major hope this weather forecast isn’t bullshit, because RAIN TAPERING OFF sounds pretty damn good to me, in every sense of the word.

← Previous Page — Next Page →

• My product review site:

  [Older recommendations]