Ever sat there some evening and thought, crap, my life is just imploding? Or worse yet, you wish it would implode and know it probably won't, that you'll just kind of drag on in a really unpleasant situation forever and ever because you don't have the guts to just get the hell out of it? That's me tonight. Sigh. I hate feeling like I have to take action, because I really am a gutless wimp, and I'm more likely to sit around seething and prickled for years and years because that's easier than actually just walking out.

But enough of the gutless wimp self-deprcation. Everyday life proceeds nonetheless. Even though there are still six or seven days left in this break, it feels like the time is getting dreadfully short. Tomorrow I'm taking the kids to go see my Dad, and while I am really glad that I am going to see him and that it's still vaguely within "the holidays," it's going to be a long solo trip. I would leave Rutledge home, which is a possibility, but it's time for him to stop playing video games. I am feeling like the worst parent on earth right now because I haven't stopped him from playing or watching because I get distracted doing other things. If he stays home with Kerry, it's a guarantee that he will spend from morning to night for the next 36 hours in front of a screen, and while having him in a car for 8 hours while we try to listen to an audio book isn't really my idea of meaningful interaction, it will probably assuage my guilt a bit.

I also hate to admit this kind of paranoia, but I guess I have to spit it out somewhere. Walter had an ECG this afternoon, and while it was kind of billed as a standard procedure before he begins a trial of a medication for ADD (something that back years ago I never would have thought I'd go in actively requesting), I'm wondering if it wasn't also because I raised some concerns by saying he seems to not pay attention and when I ask him what's going on, he'll say he's tired. You know how you get kind of a funny, off feeling when you have a medical procedure done and the ultrasound tech or the nurse doesn't give you information and gets a funny look and says the doctor will talk to you? That's the vibe I got today. I couldn't tell if the nurse was just having trouble feeding paper into the machine or something wasn't positioned right and that's why they ran it twice, but I sat around for about 10 minutes afterward, waiting for the doctor to come in to interpret, but the office was closing, Walter was getting restless, and so we were told they'd just call us. I guess since I didn't get a call, that may be good news. But there's a part of me that is wondering if there's more. I'm not a pessimist, but sometimes I feel like I have been so amazingly fortunate that I have four healthy children, that no one has any serious conditions, and that I'm just plain lucky. I had my share of little scares before they were born--questions about low amniotic fluid, poor growth, and then there was the little cardiological anxiety during the first few weeks, but thankfully that turned out to be nothing serious. So hopefully I'm just letting some reticence and shifty looks get the better of me.

I am still a bit incredulous at myself for following through with this medication thing. I'm not a big medicator, and I especially freak out a bit at anything working on little brains, but I was also feeling like I don't want to have regrets that I haven't tried to make things the best they can be, and this is one of the things I've wondered about for a long time. For now, we're going to try two weeks with half of a patch delivering the medication, whose name is escaping me now because it isn't one I hear about much. I'm grateful that our pediatrician is very cautious and low-dose about this type of thing, and like many have said, we can stop at any time if it feels like it's not working or is making things worse.



I wonder if everyone is having the year of the penguin. I feel like I'm surrounded by them! Our favorite place lately is the penguin area at our local zoo. And the house is overrun with penguin clothes, stuffed penguins, penguin earrings, penguin books, penguin questions.

We're watching a documentary called Wetbacks right now, about Latin American immigrants to North America. It was a huge adventure to get the DVD player set up in my bedroom, and it's kind of late to be starting a show at all, but I'm determined not to have fines. Just paid my $38 Henrico fine earlier this week, and it made me immensely unpopular with my whole family. I don't blame them--I am irresponsible. And it probably would be better to just buy any books that we want or need, but the support-the-community and anti-clutter sides of myself make me hesitant. Plus I really don't believe this would cost less. For every $10 in fines, I probably get forty books.

Pre-New-Years Resolutions:

1. Get kids to bed before 11:30. And up before 10 a.m.

2. Finish rearranging furniture. I'm deeply, heavily impaired in the area of interior decor and furniture placement. It irritates my family so very much that I can't leave things well enough alone, but darnit, we have whole rooms that are so non-functional that we barely use them at all. My current ambition is to make the schoolroom somewhere we will actually do work, but so far, after nearly a whole fall, it's not even close. In fact, we've kind of lost our art room in my quest to make this other room work well. Right now I have an obstacle, which is our china cabinet. If there was anywhere in the house I could put it until I rehome it, I would. I have this sense that if we could only get the whole house in perfect order, life would kind of run itself and our productivity would shoot through the roof.