Whenever I get into a serious funk, and by “serious funk” I mean “depressed with concomitant anxiety issues,” I don’t want to write. Whenever I get really stressed, and by “really stressed” I mean “anxiety issues with concomitant depression,” I don’t want to write.

Actually I don’t want to do anything except curl up and maybe lose myself in a book.

Then I get angry with myself for not being a good mother … or a good anything… and I get angry with my kids for their egregious assaults on my eardrums and I get angry with, oh, the general mass of humanity. (Burma’s junta? You bastards are so on my list!)

Cue Yul Brynner: “Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.”

I was going to write about how I had neglected some grooming rituals over the past couple of weeks due to a funk (facial regimen, self-pedicures, etc.) and how just making the time to do it a bit last night has already made a difference. My face feels better; my feet feel better. I need to learn that lesson. I need to remind myself of that lesson.

I have so many “hanging chads” in my life: things I mean to do but are all in some state of undoneness. Although I have been getting so frustrated because I do not have complete control over some of these things, I have allowed that spinning feeling to creep into everything. Then, I just have to do more, make a list, don’t expect my husband to do the things I automatically thing of as being in his domain, etc. (etc. etc.).

Eat more. Exercise less. Exercise more. Eat less.

Make an appointment to see the doctor. (Actually, I need to for new-insurance reasons but really I am an introverted hypochondriac - I don’t want to see the doctor, but I doo worry that I’m about to keel over dead. So it’s a step to take anyway. (Plus, I do think I’m gong to keel over dead.))

Make a dental appointment. (Last check-up? Pre-second-pregnancy.)

The thesis? I “gave” myself April off because… just because. Now it’s May and my progress hasn’t sped up much to what it ought to be. Go. Go. Go. (etc. etc. etc.)

I really have no respect for myself right now. I’m hurtling towards middle age and have nothing to show for it.

“Make the most of yourself… for that is all there is of you,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. I admire the man. He was right.

My day did not start well.

Slightly before five a.m. my husband had a nightmare the likes of which he has never had before. He moaned, yelled, and convulsed as his head shot straight up and he climbed to his elbows. I shouted his name and patted him on the shoulder to no avail. After what seemed an eternity, I was 75% sure I would have to climb over him to call 911 when he finally dropped back down into sleep. Then I was about 85% sure I would have to call 911 because I couldn’t see him breathing in the dark. After a few more pats on the shoulder, he dazedly asked me why I was waking him up. I told him. He said he was fine.

Shaking and sweat-drenched myself, I quickly dropped back into a restless, interminable spate of nightmares in which I kept finding out over and over that my in-laws had died. It was horrible. In the light of day, I can attribute this to 1) my fear for my own grandparents’ health (my grandmother is about the same age as my father-in-law) and 2) the earthquake in China, where my in-laws have traveled several times in the past year (though not to Sichuan).

And in the in-between moments of my life I just keep thinking of the horror of school buildings full of children collapsing. ...or any other number of tragedies…

Last night I finished Marisa de los Santos’ first novel, Love Walked In. By two a.m. this morning I was two hundred pages into her second novel, Belong to Me. Then I forced myself to sleep.

As I was reading LWI, I fell in love with the writing. Oh, it’s a good story too, but the words seemed so crisp that I wanted to put them between my teeth to hear the crunch. By the end of the novel my husband was calling me a freak for laughing out loud, which I rarely do (possibly because I usually prefer mysteries which don’t leave much space for humor).

Random things I deeply appreciate about the books:

• Anne of Green Gables
• One main character has my middle name
• One main character has my surname as non-surname
• Waxing poetic about the beauty of a hapa character
• A quick trip to Berkeley
• Old movies
• Nursing/Breastfeeding
• Birth description
• Themes of parenthood
• pancit (I had a Filipina neighbor who catered.)
• etc etc etc (I was up until two a.m. - my brain is not functioning!)

Okay, enough of that. I have a book to read.

Using acid to slowly burn off a skin tag or two? ….NOT as pleasant as it sounds.

I heard on NPR that Campbell’s is putting fewer vegetables in its vegetable soups and that Sarah Lee is using cheaper flour in its bread due to the rise in food prices. Somehow that just seemed so horrible and anxiety-provoking even though I don’t eat either one.

I just washed a cotton slipcover and cannot get it back on the couch very well. I’m highly frustrated and a bit afraid that I have ADD because I cannot finish the job.

I curse too much.

I’m thoroughly depressed about the math of going back to work part-time as a substitute teacher. Pay rate - (childcare + afterschool childcare) = $19/day, without even considering taking out taxes or the fact that gas is hella expensive. For the record, I made more $ substituting six/seven years ago and I’d make about 40% more money at the old district now because they’re trying to have certified teachers as subs, but just about every district in this county has low pay. I keep saying that I’m going to start tutoring but childcare is a problem there too.

In addition to the general rise in prices overall (food, gas, etc), I feel like I’m being nickled-and-dimed to death for living in Ann Arbor. For example, elderson’s Montessori this year cost just a smidge more than the one he went to previously. Fine. But the time is just a smidge less (and moreso for him because I have to pick him up early to cart him over to kindergarten - sorry youngerson, you are NOT going to three years of M-school) overall. And, although both schools start “at nine” the old school expected the kids to be in class, on the line, at nine o’clock whereas the new school doesn’t start picking the kids up from the car line until nine… and the car line takes ten minutes to get through. Extra hours at this year’s school cost one dollar more than at the first M-school. Every little thing is just wrung out.

Then, all the freaking mechanical things in our new-to-us, not-that-old house seem to be failing. So far, the washing machine, the sump pump (that cost thousands of dollars of mostly-insured damage), the whole-house humidifier, and something else have bit the dust. We found out that there was a leak into the garage ceiling last summer which the house-warranty refused to cover, but CC found that they didn’t even have the right reason when he spent a week and hundreds of dollars trying to fix. He thinks that our water heater might be about to bite the dust but the rattling in the refrigerator worries me much more. WTF? This house is one year newer than our previous house (which was brand-spanking-new when we bought it) but we never had any major mechanical failure there.

To make me grumpier, there is a mysterious blue smudge on my bedroom carpet that both children stepped in - one left indelible blue tracks through the hall and one left blue smudges all over my down comforter. Nobody knows what happened (I envision one of those invisible Family Circus figures with “Nobody” on the shirt driving a blue marker down into the carpet, but I could be wrong). The children have now been summarily forbidden to be in my room without an adult present, but I’m already tired of how many times I’m going to have to repeat that edict in the future.

Also, we were lucky to escape a similar problem with a chocolate-covered toddler the other day. I knew that Elderson must be sneaking chocolate chips and thought maybe he’d given some to his little brother. Oh, no, no, no. This morning I finally pressed the issue because yesterday I put the suspiciously-light chocolate chip bag to the top shelf of the pantry and still suspected that chocolate had been eaten. There was a huge stash of loose chocolate chips underneath the couch and a couple of chocolate smudges on the carpet. I’m at a complete loss because it feels like such a massive failure on my part and I dread the future prospects of a chocolate-chip-hiding not-quite-six-year-old. I want my children to have a healthy relationship with food and I hate myself that it’s veering in this direction.

There was a brouhaha* in my extended family a couple of weeks ago that only touched on me in that someone offended me for disparaging others so I stayed up until two a.m. writing a response. This week I found out more about the brouhaha’s background situation (it all involved emailing) and I am equal parts bemused and horrified. Combined with today’s Dear Abby about a golddigger, I have come to the realization that my father’s wife is a deeply unhappy woman due to the fact that she’s a golddigger who found no gold. Sadly, apples didn’t fall too far from that tree according to some sources and hackles were raised (enough that a will was changed - that’s the part that mainly amuses me).

*Every time I type “brouhaha” I think of elderson’s word for skirt when he was a wee thing. “Mama! Woohaha!” he’d say on the rare occassion I’d pull a skirt on. I’m pretty sure the origin of that word is Finding Nemo - the fishtank, fish chanting “Woo ha ha ha woo ha ha ha” while dressed in polynesian styles…

I just realized that my husband and I turned into a couple almost thirteen years ago.

I met him almost sixteen years ago.

Damn, I’m old.

I tend not to write “about” him because if I did I’d probably end up writing about my mundane frustrations.

To counter that tendency I will say that he cooks more than half our dinners, he bathes the children (manly showers), he reads a story to the elder child almost every night, and he leaves for work a smidge after six every morning.

Several months of ice skating lessons meant that when PonyBoy attempted his second inline skating experience, after a failed first attempt last autumn, he zipped around without a second thought. So now due to the removal of his training wheels, he has found two ways to propel himself death-defyingly fast in the past two weeks. How am I supposed to remain calm when disaster is now always imminent?

Meanwhile, the toddler and I took PB’s field trip day, which provided us with six whole hours of no drop-offs, as a chance to escape to the zoo. In PB’s toddlerhood we went to the zoo at least once a week - one of the major family-friendly benefits of our old location. The toddler and I, however, had never been to the zoo by ourselves. Without a walking child, I pushed us through at a toddler-in-a-stroller pace, which means that we didn’t linger at any animal, we saw more animals than usual, and we were out of the zoo just in time for him to drop off into a deep naptime for the drive home. As a double-bonus, a polar bear was swimming as we went through the “Arctic Ring of Life” underwater tunnel - the boy came face-to-face with a polar bear.

Now, a complaint. I really do not understand why annarborites are so intent on going to the Toledo Zoo. First, it’s fifteen minutes further away than the Detroit Zoo. Second, it’s disloyal to Michigan. Third, Toledo already screwed us over by closing COSI-Toledo. Fourth, the Detroit Zoo is not actually *in* Detroit so the knee-jerk annarborite response to notbeingasuburbofdetroit shouldn’t hold sway.

The Detroit Zoo has a problem only in that it is an older zoo, designed to have a great, sweeping formal zoo entrance. A big lawn at the entrance curves around to a gorgeous old building that houses a butterfly conservatory. Behind that building is more open space where the zoo holds concerts and other gatherings. Then there’s a lake with an amphibian house and reptile house at either end. Behind the reptile house is a grand park area of flowers, climb-able trees, and a large, ornate fountain. It’s gorgeous but it can be daunting to actually get to the outdoor animals although the camels do hang out to the right of fountain. Altogether, I’ve always taken it as a very pleasant walk and good exercise. Beyond the grandness* is a very nice zoo that has regularly updated the animal habitats and which is highly involved in conservation efforts.

*It’s also important to remember that the city that gave life to the zoo was once a grand city in its own right.

Ben & Jerry’s