For Dr. D

I go and see a therapist about once a month, and I have noticed that I spend most of our 50-minute hour yarning on about the things that went down over the course of the month rather than discussing what my next move is going to be, so I thought it would be just jakers if I sat here and yarned on the blog and let her read about my fascinating crap before I show up! Yeah! Okay then! This month I got derailed by my parents' storage facility catching on fire thanks to an arsonist. The arsonist wasn't considerate enough to burn my parents' metric ton of useless crap so we had to move it to another storage unit about two blocks away. This task was accomplished in about four hours over two days and it was a rush because we got in there and did the dirty without much sturm und drang or hopeless scurrying. However, I did come home with four large boxes full of children's books that are currently clogging up the dining area/place to store crap until I'm ready to deal with it. My son spent ten days playing with a ten-year-old girl and came out of it with a shiny new smarty-pants attitude that all of us are trying to realign into something socially acceptable. My mother is using schoolwork because one of the manifestations of my son's attitude is the concept that reading is for saps. My father is using withering sarcasm, which is only serving to provide my son with more interesting and rude phrases for his working vocabulary. My husband is using removal of privileges and loud directives, which does work to the extent that it stops the attitude, but makes our son run into his room, slam the door and sob into his pillow while he comes up with a fantasy that makes his father akin to Darth Vader. I have been trying to channel the attitude into acceptable alternatives like joke-telling, or getting him to do something interesting with me that will stop abruptly if he says "Duh!", "Whatever" or "When can I watch Spongebob?" My daughter had her little moment of independent thought a few weeks ago, when she didn't want to go to bed and she told me so in vehemently enunciated gibberish words, hand gestures and violent head-shaking. Ever since that evening, she has been expanding her vocabulary, learning hundreds of words in both English and American Sign Language, but she has started whining so we have been encouraging her to say "No, Thank You" instead of shaking her head and whining "NOoooooOOOOOO nononononononono!" She has also started legging it around this place like gangbusters and she is incredibly strong and not too sharp about stuff that might kill her so I spend a lot of time just keeping her alive, which she resents and she is not shy about sharing her feelings. While preparing the house for flea-fogging I managed to sprain my ankle so badly that I could not feature continuing the project, so now all the clothing is out in my mother's truck and I'm holding off on fogging until my ankle is better. I was super-uber-mega pissed OFF about the injury, mainly because I wasn't whining or stressing out over the project, I was just getting on with it and I got derailed by the universe! I had the library demonstration last week and while I did not manage to put out any promotional materials, the event went pretty smoothly so I have nothing to kick myself about, really. I have not gotten very far with the execution of my son's birthday party, mostly because I keep getting derailed, but I still have 12 days and I can do it in that time if I get it together. The thing that really chaps me is that for the library demo and the flea-fogging I asked people to help me out, and people agreed and then they canceled out on me too late to get replacement people. I've been told to ask for help and I've been told that one can only depend on oneself and I am beginning to really adhere to the second principle. My husband was initially irritated that I hurt myself because according to him, I should have planned the fogging for a day when he'd be home to assist me, but what the hey, sez I, I should be able to shift a few boxes of crap and drape all the electronics in plastic and scrub the floors and counters afterwards all by myself, right? We attribute all cantankerous behavior on my husband's part to his impromptu cessation of cigarette smoking and we forgive it because on a scale of one to ten, my husband's cantankerous behavior is usually a one so just because his dopamine levels are compromised and he's acting a bit snotty and patronizing right now is not a compelling enough set of circumstances for anyone to do anything but sympathize with him.