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October 19, 2005

condemned to repeat it

I spend a weird afternoon in frustrating, cryptic e-mail correspondence and then spend the evening trying to make my children happy, and anybody who's a parent knows how frustrating and cryptic a journey that can be as well.

By the way, it's not just them; I can't seem to figure anybody out: not my kids, not men in general, not me in particular, and I spend a lot of time feeling like a person in the background a photograph of somebody else--I'm at the corner of the image, or maybe a little bit left of center ... I'm the out-of-focus one even though the images around me are perfectly clear.

The traffic is terrible on the way home. Herself and Moo are sniping at each other when I walk in the front door. The cat litter needs changing. I make dinner; it's the wrong dinner and Herself says "Well, I guess I just won't eat tonight." I ask Moo to fold the clothes and he announces that he will only fold his, thank you very much. Since all the food in the house is food nobody will eat, I go out to the grocery store after the kitchen is clean. I stop at the Girl Scout leader's house to pay for an upcoming horseback-riding field trip. She isn't home but her husband is; he's on the phone but doesn't hang up and with the easy charm and hospitality so common to where I live, doesn't invite me in but keeps me on the front porch and lets me teeter gracelessly on one leg while I write a check using my thigh as a writing desk. To whom should I make it out? "I dunno; she'll figure it out." She, I assume, is his wife, the girl scout leader and the mother of his children. "Great!" he says heartily after I hand him the check, then he shuts the door in my face.

When I get back home the cat litter still needs changing and Herself and Moo are still at it. I pour myself the end of the bottle of champagne I opened on my birthday. It's flat but so what. Here's to me.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)