So, the doctor told me that I could split up my daily dosages of prednisone into two or three sittings, if I liked, because it might be hard on my stomach. Naturally this caused me to pick up my prescriptions at Target and then stand there in the checkout line swallowing all five pills at once. Because, I don’t know, for some crazy reason my priority is to make my leg stop swelling and itching, please, for the love of all that is holy.

I came home and puttered around a bit, then fell face-first into my keyboard as a wave of exhaustion overtook me. Huh. Maybe the prednisone makes me sleepy? So I caught a nap for an hour before I had to go pick Chickadee up at the bus stop.

During that hour, the evil prednisone army of emotional instability appears to have taken over mission control. Not–mind you–that I’m claiming to have been an archetype of emotional stability previous to this, but trust me. If I am feeling worse than usual in such a marked way, it is time to hide your children and valuables and pretend that you don’t know me.

The general course of the rest of my afternoon follows.

I have to get to the bus. I am so tired. Sooooooooo tired. I feel as if I have never slept in my life. I feel like crap. I AM SO ITCHY. My shoe doesn’t fit around the swelling. I must now limp to the bus stop to pick up the child most likely to cause me to go insane and feel like the very worst parent in the entire world and in the meantime I am really quite a saint because I am dragging myself down the road for this ingrate instead of sleeping which is the only thing I want to do right now and oh yes by the way I am dying here you know!

Then there was a little bit of weeping. And I went and got Chickadee.

Now I have to get her into the car and go get Monkey and oh my God I didn’t plan anything for dinner or get to the store but I guess I’ll think of something and is it really necessary for a preschooler to bring home eighty gazillion sheets of paper every single day and oh look, I just committed the cardinal sin of touching one of those papers which I wasn’t supposed to touch and now he’s having a breakdown and perhaps the earth could open up and swallow me right now but probably not because the school, so far as I know, has no history of large, instantaneous craters. Oh well.

A few more tears.

[Sidebar: On the way home, we were stopped at a light behind a white van. The door opened, and the driver–a woman a bit older than myself–leaned out and threw up on the road. Then she closed the door and drove away when the light turned green. That was disturbing.]

Yes, you may go play while I make dinner, please; no, don’t argue and torment each other unless you want me to… oh, nevermind, fine, kill each other, just let me know who’s still alive and needing dinner when you’re done. Where did all of these dishes come from and why didn’t I put them in the dishwasher like a normal productive human… oh… because the dishwasher is full of clean dishes I never put away so great, fiiiine, I will unload, reload, because if I don’t do it it will never get done, story of my life, oh my god could I wallow some more here, well, probably, but I still have to make dinner. Um, fish sticks… smiley fries… the fries are mocking my pain with their cheerful little smiles, you know, and what else, let’s see, vegetables for garnish since no one will eat them because they would rather die from malnutrition than admit that I make delicious well-balanced meals and I am a miserable, insignificant speck in the universe except that most specks do not have to break up skirmishes or cook stupid smiley fries.

Wah.

Eat eat eat. Shower shower shower. Get dressed get dressed get into your pajamas right now or I am going to cry. Brush your teeth brush your teeth brush. your. teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeth. Yes, Mama is turning purple. No, I am not crying. No, I just don’t feel very well. No, it is not okay to put your toothbrush in your brother’s ear in a midguided attempt to cheer me up. No, pantsing your sister is not acceptable retaliation. Okay! Let’s go to sleep! Well, you go to sleep. I am just going to stay up and do some chores and scratch for a while and chat with the voices in my head….

P.S. The swelling hasn’t gone down at all. Yay, prednisone! Drug of crazy-making but no actual useful results! Yeah, I’m impatient. But the voices in my head totally say that life is hard, I’m entitled, and if you’re mean to me I have permission to squirt hydrocortisone ointment in your eye.