ez_mo

I thought this post to be particularly well-done.

Hell, I've probably read a h dozen books since my last post. I can't even think of all of them to put them into the damned list. What I finally put down --in the middle of the book, no less! -- was Richard Lewis' The OTHER Great Depression. Ack! I know he's doing his 12 Steps, but Goshdarnit, this is one area where he should give up the personal apologies and hire the ghostwriter. He'a a terrible writer. I started the book feeling sorry for the poor lad; I'm thinking, "Quit yer bitchin'!" I was so annoyed I gave up the book in the middle and started on Fall on Your Knees. OMG, her writing is beautiful! Try this:

A war changed people in a number of ways. It either shortcuts you to your very self; or it triggers such variations that you might as well have been a larva, pupating in dampness, darkness, and tightly wrapped putters. Then, providing you don't take flight from your khaki cocoon so changed from a burst shell, you emerge from your khaki cocoon so changed from what you were that you fear you've gone mad, because people at home treat you as though you were someone else. Someone who, through a bizarre conincidence, had the same name, address and blood ties as you, but who must have died in the war. And you have no choice but to live as an imposter because you can't remember who you were before the war. There's a simple but hrrible explanation for this: you were born in the war. You slid, slick, bloody, and fully formed out of a trench.

Richard Lewis: STFU.

So the new stuff is this: Ana learned to walk about three weeka ago and now she's lurching everywhere (preferably traffic) ant breakneck speed. She has added "Kitty", "Here ya go," and "I did it!" to her verbal reportiore. She's also very kissy. kisses everyone on the mouth witrh a big "Mwah!" to top it off. Oh, and she's learned (mostly) "Bye-Bye" with limp-wristed movement. I say "almost" learned because she has the full 1-minute delayed reaction. People coo over her and say "Bye-Bye!" Long after they're gone, she cranes her head looking for the person while saying herself, "baa-baaa."

Ana and Anton are starting to really play well with each other. Anton cracks her up. They crack each other up with zerbert contests and hand-grabbing in the back of car, all to the accompianment of squeals of laughter. Anton realizes that she can sometimes be a lot of fun. In a few years, this may not be so idyllic: they are both born pranksters. Ana, however, has a specail love for trying to get Anton in trouble. Lordy, they're going to be a pair!

Have I mentioned that Anton is pretty much potty-trained? Oh, sweet releif! Now it takes only a few days for the bedroom to small like a pissatorium as oppsed to every bloody day!

I really don't mention Anton enough. He's an exceedingly cool kid. With manners! Every day, he gives me a new reason to be really proud of him.

And now I'm fucking tired. I'm going to bed.

After being suckled all night by the vampire that is my baby -- thereby getting approximately 4 hours less sleep than you -- you were annoyed that I waved away the loud noises Anton was making at 9:30 this morning.

Maybe I should have been annoyed last week, when I took the kids out of the house at 8:30am (so you wouldn't be disturbed by the loud noises Anton likes to make early in the morning) and came into find you still asleep at 2pm.

I make sure you are allowed sleep and I don't rag you about it; you let the kids make noise all around me and give me crap that I'm tired. That's as close as I can come to putting my finger on what is pissing me off at the moment. What it comes down to is that I don't feel like I get any real credit for my contributions; many of those contributions being things that allow you to have your freeedom and fun and allow you to exercise your hobbies.

I get crap for having stayed 2 whole hours at my knitting group when it's the first time I've been in a month. But it's taken for granted that I will keep the kids out of your hair onthe day of your DJ night so t hat you can practice, that I will assume your traditional nighttime rituals with the boy, and that I will again keep the kids away from you the following morning so that you can catch up on your sleep since you didn't get home until 4am. That I do this is expected. That you watch the kids for a day while I catch up on 6 months of backlogged work is a big deal.

So pardon me if I don't jump off the roof in happiness that you watch the children now and then. My hobbies and creative/mental needs are not important enough in this household to really get much more than lip-service. Your hobbies and desires are owed to you because you work full-time. No fucking wonder that I want to go to work -- maybe that way I'll get some credit: real credit -- for having done something for the family and will be allowed to occasionally have fun without spousely punishment.