This morning I found this picture on my camera, and for a second I thought, "whose pig pen is that?!" Then I realized that is was/is mine. WHAT?! Have I been so, I don't know... preoccupied? That I hadn't even noticed that the first room seen by anyone who enters our home, and the only room those pesky door to door windshield repairmen ever see is a giant mess. How did that happen? We are living in filth. Such a shame.
And I don't think I'm going to do anything about it. Not today anyway.
Little hearts around the world must be breaking, one of the Jonas Brothers is engaged. Yep. Read all about it here. I feel just like TMZ.
I'm the meanest mom EVER! I'm making my kids do their Saturday chores on.......WEDNESDAY!!
Have you ever heard of anything so awful? Neither have my kids. They might die. One of them keeps asking me why they have to clean the bathrooms EVERY SINGLE WEEK.
I know. You probably haven't ever met anyone who cleaned their bathrooms so often. Just call me Joan Crawford.
It seems that when I posted last night I failed to tell everyone what I was posting about. Ooops. My son and I are reading Infinite Jest together, or trying to anyway. I want to be positive about it, but I'm not down with cryptic reading as much as I might have been in my youth.
I'm emerging from a four day migraine and I am seriously considering petitioning my local law makers to force my brain to limit these things to two consecutive days at a time. I really cannot afford to waste four days in a row. Not to mention that I am exhausted now. Lying in bed and trying to keep my head from exploding is apparently hard work.
Last week I (foolishly) wondered why I get so stressed about my to-do lists, I mean I just need to do what needs to be done and get on with it. Right? Later that same day I started getting a headache. Not a bad one, just enough to make me edgy. The problem is I never know if it’s going to stay just on the fringes or turn into four wasted days. I definitely hate the wasted days, but the unknown is almost as bad. I’m sure that sounds really stupid. Why waste time worrying? Right? Because I can’t plan my life, that’s why. I never know if I’m gong to be up or “not up”. So what do I do? Not make commitments? Because that doesn't work for me. I want to do things. I like having stuff to do, but when I am physically unable to fulfill my “duties” I feel like a giant flake. I feel like a crippled girl. I’m afraid people will think I’m lazy or unreliable. The thing is, in a way, I am unreliable. Not by choice, but does it really matter why?
That's my take on the first 75 pages. Holy Cow. Hopefully it will start to come together soon.
I think my son and I are both feeling like "where in the world is he going with this?!"
Hopefully the force will be with me and I will use my great powers of deduction to figure out the mystery of Hal's speech impediment as well as his freaky OCD pot addiction, and let's not for get what the heck is up with the Interlace cartridge viewing. Whew.
If you're confused, imagine how I feel.
Yesterday morning my daughter had a dentist appointment. I was kind of looking forward to it because I thought that while she was in the chair I would have some time to catch up on my reading. Ha! Apparently I’ve never met my daughter.
Before they called her back she asked me if I would stay with her while she got the shot, which of course I was more than happy to do. From the amount of theatrics that one tiny shot created a person might have thought that this little girl had never been to the dentist before and had no idea what to expect (or that they were amputating a limb). Not true. She has been to the dentist many times, but every time is like the first. “How long will this take?” “How bad will it hurt?” “Do I get a prize at the end?” “How long until I can eat again?” “When are you going to buy me a shiny gold tooth?” You know, all of the important things.
I stayed for the shot then I wished the dentist luck (because obviously he was going to need it) and headed out to the lobby. It wasn’t long before the whimpering started. Why don’t dentists get soundproof rooms? No one wants to hear that while they are waiting for their own root canal.
Would you think I was terribly cruel if I told you I pretended not to hear when the sounds of her squeals and cries carried down the hall and into the waiting room? How about if I told you I acted surprised when the hygienist came to get me because my daughter really wanted me with her? At least I didn’t roll my eyes. I don’t think I did anyway. I tried really hard not to.
Poor thing, I’m just not one of those moms who coddle and say sweet things when their kids are upset. No, I am one of those moms who, annoyed because I didn’t get to see the end of Divorce Court on the waiting room TV (now I will never know who got to keep the trailer) tells her (one and only) daughter to suck it up and let them drill the decay out of her tooth. I might have mentioned that it was her own fault that she was there in the first place, I mean she has access to floss for crying out loud. (I’m the mom that says “I told you if you ran with a stick you’d put your eye out. Happy now? Now that you’re BLIND!?” the whole way to the emergency room.)
When she was finally finished and we were on our way home she told me she thought it went really well. “It hardly hurt at all” she told me. I guess that depends on where you were sitting, because it was pretty painful in my chair.
On another note, I’d like to mention how relieved I am that our unseasonably cool temperatures have finally hit the road and things have returned to normal around here. There is just nothing quite as oveny and kiln-like as Arizona in the summer, and the thought of going an entire season without everyone and their dog commenting on the warmth had me a little nervous. ----------------Really people. It’s Arizona, it’s hot, its dry, and you’ve lived here forever. What were you expecting? Get over it or move, but for Pete’s sake, stop acting surprised.
So there’s this book, and it’s l-o-n-g. Like, uh, almost 1000 pages. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, and I guess, I mean I know, people are getting little groups together and planning to read all of it this summer. The whole thing, all 981 pages. Weirdos.
My son, Edge (yes, that’s his real name, what of it?) asked me if I’d heard anything about it and if I’d want to read it with him. I had heard, and figured those people making all those big plans must be unemployed college students, ‘cause really, who else has time to even think about reading a book like that on a schedule? I know I don’t. No siree. I’m busy.
But then, just like that, my brain turned to mush (which is not exactly a positive development when you're about to read a 20 lb. book). You see, it’s super important to me to seem hip and cool to my newly adult son----ummm, what I mean is, it’s ultra important to me to find common interests that I can use to strengthen our relationship, no matter the already precarious state of my sanity, which is why I know you will understand when I tell you that I have decided to throw caution to the wind and take the Infinite Jest Summer Challenge.
The other books I’ve been reading aren’t really working out anyway. The Real Benjamin Franklin is boring me to death; it’s our book group selection this month. You know, few years ago I read the Franklin biography by Walter Issacson and I liked it a lot, but this one feels like it’s written at a 6th grade level and it’s killing me. Killing me!! (Have I ever mentioned that I’m kind of a book snob? I am. Big deal. Everyone should have standards and book group or no, summer is too short to spend it reading boring books. I learned that from Oprah.)
I’ve also been reading A Brain Wider than the Sky; a Migraine Diary, by Andrew Levy. I like it quite a bit, but I seem to get more migraines in the summer than I do in the other seasons and reading about auras while seeing them is not as much fun as one might think, so I’m going to save this one for fall.
I’ve never read anything by David Foster Wallace so this afternoon I downloaded a short story “Shipping Out”. It’s not bad. Somewhere I read compared him to Vonnegut, but so far, I don’t think so. Whew. Nothing personal, maybe I just had a bad experience with Vonnegut, I’ve only read Breakfast of Champions, but it made me feel like the butt of a joke. Like maybe someone was sitting around the corner laughing their head off that I was reading it. For all I know Mr. Vonnegut was a perfectly nice man with a great (by great I mean “normal”) sense of humor, I just don’t want to spend the next 3 months reading a book that makes me feel like the main character in an elaborate prank.
Thank goodness I don’t go off on tangents.
Anyhow, the point is we’re doing it. 75 pages a week, plus footnotes. 75 pages a week is pretty doable, unless it gets really weird or boring, then I might have to rent the movie or something (just kidding! Sheesh, you people will fall for anything.). Here’s a link to the schedule if you’d like to join us (you know you want to). I’m going to post updates/summaries on Sundays, mostly to keep myself on schedule. It would be so embarrassing to have to tell you I’ve gotten behind, especially now that I’ve told you that I’m a giant book snob who doesn’t like Vonnegut. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Not that any of that matters anyway, what matters here is that I am the best mom ever, right? Right?
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