*#&$(*&^Q)$_$&&!!!!

Yes, I'm back in Blogger after one day because the &$&^@#)^^%)!!@ Macbook suddenly sprouted the white screen of death barely more than 24 hours after it was returned to me. In a bizarre turn of events, I actually did not check my email at all after 9:00 this morning, so I can't explain it. But I want to scream. So maybe I just will. My new set of demands: All new computer with all of MY stuff on it exactly where it belongs just as it is now; instantaneous service (no more 5 day waits); no more goddamn trips to the West End this week! I've been looking at Dell and some other places for alternate options. This is such bs.

Juli, if you are reading, it's Miranda. Miranda. Speak of the devil, while I was trying to get Rutledge down (as yet unsuccessful...), Sex and the City was on, and there she was. I can see the resemblance, but I wouldn't mob you in the Gloucester Wal-Mart and ask for your autograph; it's not that close. And besides, you aren't her character anyway ;)

I fear that I am getting a very bad reputation these days. First I abandon a child at a large "Fashion Park," while I have another mother's child in my charge. Then I admit that I had contemplated going home instead of picking up my three children from a friend's house, because I suddenly was not feeling well (but let me add, my dh had already been called and wouldn't have let them stay too long...). I mean really, would you want me to come and die in your house? I didn't think so. So note to all those who might be reading: please let me drop off my children again some day!!! I promise to return!!! I've never really left a child overnight!!! And for anyone contemplating letting one of your dear ones in my vehicle on an excursion, I've never left behind any children but those who passed through my loins.

Which leads back to my little health issue. I consulted a lovely but highly unqualified friend today, who provided a kind, reflectively listening ear ("you are feeling very distressed!") as I poured out my tale of woe, and then told me that I must seek competent medical advice. This precipitated a half dozen phonecalls to offices that I hate (prickly Physicians of Family Medicine Clover Hill, whatever the nasty surgeon's office was that forced me to call my primary care doctor from a pay phone to get a referral faxed over) to figure out how to get my gallbladder scan pictures transferred to the new doctor. Now I have to go to St. Francis Medical Center tomorrow morning to sign a release, and given the snotty attitude of large practices these days, it will probably take a week for them to actually send what I want (several places have had rude signs saying something like, "Don't come asking us for referrals or record transfers that you need right away unless you are going to drop dead in our office this minute, in which case you are to proceed to the nearest E.R."). And then it's on to making an appointment and trying to cover the childcare issue. And of course the basic fear that someone is going to want to do some kind of invasive test that involves drinking odd semi-liquids. But something must be done to assure myself that I am do not have some dread disease.

I have been so loud lately. I've always had this voice modulation problem, made all the worse if I have been drinking. One glass of wine is all it takes lately to make my head spin, though I dare say there are SOME PEOPLE lately who make me look pretty stable. Saturday night it was the inadvertently practically shouted comment about sexual frequency (prefaced, ironically, by the phrase, "You're the only one I can talk to about things like this!"), right as we were walking through Michael's, causing wild laughter from total strangers (hey, a stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet...). Then it was bizarre and just over the top snarky conversations with my new neighbor, about whom I really know nothing, about how my other neighbors hate me. Then a perhaps too free conversation with two lovely friends I don't know all that well yet (but I was *not* the first to show my belly...). Then a rehashing of the most intimate of topics from Saturday night at a child's 5th birthday party to someone who I had not seen in months and who didn't need *that much* information from me. Today I was way too mean and goofy at co-op. All I can say is I hope I behaved at the birthday party tonight. I seem to be on a bad roll. I used to be a pretty reserved person, but maybe that Republican comment from Kerry really got to me. Now if I could just get my kids to stop talking about that bra I crocheted....

AND WHY DOESN'T ANYONE WANT TO MAKE THOSE 6 MAGIC CABIN DOLLS WITH ME!!!!


My daughter cried tonight. I was gone for what, two hours?, and she was sobbing uncontrollably, dramatically pitching wadded up Kleenex over her shoulder (I found them all over the floor and stuffed back into the tissue box...eww). So Kerry felt he simply must call me during dinner so that she could hear my voice, and then he said I was mean to her! Mean! I wasn't mean. I had listened to her crying for hours today. Walter used to do this kind of thing, even up through last year. I should be very flattered, and they seem to adore me despite my Mommy Dearest moments (today I was not exactly the kind and gentle Mama), but sheesh. Can't a person go out during normal evening hours without the homefront completely falling apart? What a sweet little girl, though. She was waiting patiently for me when I came home, with her _Pair of Red Clogs_ in hand for me, giggling over her favorite parts of the story. And if I may boast, I did a darn good job of reading this book tonight--my voice is definitely back now (finally), and maybe it was absence making the heart grow fonder again, but all three kids were enthralled and wanted me to do it again. It's rare that I get asked to do an encore of the same book these days. She just loves her own special vocabulary word "murmur," and the crazy voice for the sound that the shoes make after they are broken. It's funny which books hit a kid when you wouldn't expect it.

I received some very sad news tonight. One of my very good friends is back on yet another tour in Iraq. I thought he was transferred to Texas so that he would be in some position where this wouldn't happen again. Maybe such a thing doesn't exist. We should be proud that the U.S. is represented by someone as wonderful as Jack, but for God's sake, this is not worth losing someone like him over.