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Archives from 2002-2006

After all my wigging out about going back to school, all of a sudden next Tuesday is the final exam and the last class meeting of the quarter. It seems like the weeks have just flown by, and makes me reflect on the truth of what many of you said when I was hemming and hawing over starting this in the first place: the time is going to pass either way.

So here I am a few months later, five credits further down the road than I would have been if I’d decided to wait. Five credits is a very small step, but still.

I suppose I could still flunk the shit out of that last test, but even if I do I’ll have a passing grade. You guys, I have done really well in this class, and as far as therapy goes tuition probably costs more than a beard-stroking talk therapist but whatever, I am crushing those old and icky feelings of school-related failure, one A at a time.

Of course it remains to be seen if my newfound academic excellence can translate to something other than Sociology 101 and a homework load that was pretty much limited to two exams and three “personal reflection” essays. Ahem.

I registered for spring quarter yesterday and I’m on the waiting list for a nutrition class (yay!), a math class (boo!), and if neither of those work out I’ll be hooking up with Intercultural Communication (AKA, The Humanities Credit You Take When the Only Other Evening Class Option is Public Fucking Speaking Which Oh My God No I Would Rather Die in a Fire).

It feels a bit like chipping at some enormous mountain with a teeny tiny chisel, but—say it with me—the time will pass either way. Where do I want to be a couple years from now: standing in front of the same overwhelming hill, or starting to see the shape of what’s underneath?

This feels right, and good, and best of all, I’m enjoying the process. Even the beshitted studying.

:::

PS: in housekeeping news, I just started a weekly column with The Stir over at CafeMom. I hope you come by and visit!

Early last week I was happily trading parenting war stories with my friend at work and I can’t remember exactly what I said but it was something to the effect of how I hadn’t had to clean up anyone’s barf in, like, months. The moment the words left my mouth I realized my grievous error and I instantly rapped my knuckles on the wooden surface of my desk but it was too late: a vortex appeared in the ceiling, a swirling black cloud emerged, and as I spiraled into the darkness I dimly heard the hollow mirthless laughter of the damned echoing behind me.

Which is all to say that of course both children became sick that very same night and of course I eventually found myself using a paper towel to pick chunks of semi-digested god-knows-what out of the bathtub. And may I just add that while a bathtub is certainly a preferable receptacle for human vomit than, say, the living room carpet, being confronted with RINSED SOLID MATTER is sort of a profoundly repulsive experience all on its own.

On Friday morning Dylan looked so incredibly godawful, like something dredged from the bottom of the ocean and heated in the microwave for a good ten minutes, that I dragged him to the pediatrician’s office, where he enjoyed a miraculous transformation the instant we walked through the front doors and he saw the office fishtank. “A FISH!” he blared, clapping his little hands with robust healthy glee, his death-pallor replaced by a pink-cheeked glow, his crusted-over slimenose suddenly clear and dry as a summer afternoon. “An’ ANNUDDA fish!”

He howled lustfully and with great vigor when the doctor touched him with the stethoscope, he thrashed like a wild bull while I tried to hold him down for the ear-inspection, and when I foolishly attempted to pry his angry little jaws open with my hand so the doctor could get the tongue depressor into his mouth, he nearly took my finger off at the knuckle.

All in all, he was PERFECTLY FINE, other than being kind of a raging ASSHOLE.

Eighty thousand doses of Motrin and a few sleep-free nights later, both kids seem to generally be back to normal, except for Dylan’s temperament, which I can only describe as fractious, in the sense that he makes me want to fracture my own skull with a ballpeen hammer. I don’t know if he’s got some residual ear discomfort or if there is an actual rabies-infected badger lodged up his colon or what the deal is, but living with him right now is sort of what I imagine it must be like to hang out with that Leave Britney Alone guy, if that guy also maybe had a chainsaw and his head could spin 360 degrees on his neck.

The child is a little touchy, is what I’m saying. It’s very relaxing to be around.

So let me be a lesson to you—do not under any circumstances break the cardinal rule of parenting, which is that when it comes to good-luck streaks of health or sleep, you NEVER announce how good things are going. Unless of course it’s been a while since you’ve de-puked a tub and you’d like to see just how sharp those skills still are.

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