Woulda Coulda Shoulda

Tomorrow we leave on our last camping trip of the summer, and I want you to know that because I am a paragon of planning and efficiency, I have not done one single thing to prepare. NOT ONE. I mean, I wanted to. I PLANNED to. And yet… yeah. Nothing.

Remember back when I was all “Oh, this summer is going to be so relaxing! I can’t wait!”? While I am not actually admitting to smoking crack, let’s just say I’m not sure I was entirely WITH myself when I said that. I simply don’t DO relaxing, because it takes a lot of energy to consistently be this disorganized.

Take yesterday, for example. We were having some friends come over to hang out and swim. I try to keep work light on Fridays specifically so that I can do these sorts of things, particularly in the summer. So I got up totally ready to have a superfun day, stress-free. (more…)

My navel is FASCINATING. Excuse me while I stare at it some more.

[That's a total lie. My navel is horrifying. I used to have a belly ring, you know, back when I was convinced I'd never be able to get pregnant so I might as well ENJOY THAT FLAT BELLY and show it off, and I reasoned that a belly ring was less permanent than a tattoo. I was right, but I was short-sighted---I have a big scar where the ring used to be, because I waited until I was a hundred months and fifty pounds pregnant to remove it. Whoops.]

Anyway, to get the full breadth of my navel-gazing, feel free to head over to Five Full Plates, where today I am realizing that my own damn self is out of my comfort zone, and I’m pretty sure the metaphysics of that little gem caused a rift in the space-time continuum. Sorry ’bout that.

And then, if you’re tired of me (which, really, who could blame you?), perhaps you’d like to read my interview with Ruth Wells Fischer on BlogHer, the last in our series of posts for Autism Awareness Month. Ruth is a smart and lovely lady who has kindly held my hand from afar through a lot of this Asperger’s stuff, and I’m thrilled to share her wisdom with the community at large.

Interesting side note, to interpret as you will: BlogHer is currently running a little Meet These Autism Bloggers spot, and when I saw my picture in that post I had a moment of utter confusion. Because I’m not an autism blogg— oh. I guess I am. Writer, know thyself (dumbass).

Sometimes I read the kinds of blog where people are all, “And over here you can see the Battant Ornithorynque lamp we picked out while vacationing in the south of France. I think it provides the perfect accent to the small table below it, which I created one summer by arranging shards of Ming Dynasty china into an elaborate mosaic pattern of a single feather blowing along a field of poppies on a cloudless day.” There are invariably a billion pictures of a pristine and gorgeous space where not a single molecule is out of order, and I briefly wonder if they didn’t actually just scan in some catalog pages to go along with their story.

I love those sorts of blogs, by the way. It’s just really not anything you’ll ever get from me.

From me, the tale goes more like this: My kids are slobs and my head exploded and then we bought some cubbies and I spent an entire weekend digging out a couple of rooms. Somewhere in the middle I screeched “TAKE PICTURES! I WANT PROOF!” to my husband, and he obliged because you don’t argue with me when I’m sitting in the middle of a pile of Legos.

That’s pretty much the entire story (in handy abbreviated form), but if you want the extended dance remix, feel free to check out my first post in our Spring Cleaning Challenge series over at Five Full Plates. For four weeks we’ll be whipping our houses into shape; I am going to be spending a lot of time dropping off bags of crap at Goodwill, I can tell already.

I was really hoping that August was going to be The Month Of Suck and then September would be an improvement; then I was hoping that September was just Suckage: The Continuing Saga, and October would be The Month That Everything Magically Got Better.

As I write this, Otto is in bed with the not-flu; the doctor doesn’t know what it is, though he has MRSA (again, or still, depending on what you believe) and a high fever and actually STAYED HOME FROM WORK, which means that I’m pretty sure he’s going to die. I’m going to miss him terribly, especially because I hate taking out the trash.

This, along with Everything Else, has made for continued stress and worry, and I know it’ll all be okay eventually, but right now the moments of joy ’round here are fleeting.

Then again, it’s the little joys that are sometimes the sweetest. (more…)