One time she broke her phone in three pieces. One time she got locked out of her house and it was raining and now she has broken her iPod and this is without a doubt the very worst thing that has ever happened to her.

And I start crying.

I have to pretend my book is sad.

I’m not even involved in their conversation. I cry because what a wonderful and charmed life she must have had. I want to tell her about my dead baby. I want to tell her about betrayal. I want to talk about sickness and fear and hunger. Drunk drivers and cancer. Being truly let down and the way debt can so quickly spiral out of control. About being alone, or being smothered. I want to tell her about the job you hate so much you get physically ill every Sunday night. I want to talk to her about how I am going crazy.

I want to tell her how much I hate myself sometimes and how much worse that is than breaking something that is entirely replaceable.

I also kind of want to give her my iPod.

I am sure that isn’t the bad part. I have to believe she is sad because of the lost music. She probably doesn’t want to listen to Duran Duran, Sepultura and The Dandy Warhols anyway. She might not even know who Alice in Chains are, or were, or are.

Could I hand her an iPod and fix her problems? The one I have in my bag I bought with credit card points. It means nothing to me. I like it. I don’t need it.

Why do I always cry on airplanes?

I remember what the doormouse said, I just have no idea what to do with that information.

Love,

Sarah

I thought he was probably taking a break, but maybe he had spies.

Ian said he knew exactly who the spies were.

All I can think of is Pennywise, Troll, AND a really freaking scary elf just waiting in the duct work.

And our schools are canceled for the rest of the year.

To be completely fair, the kids really only had two and a half days of school this week anyway, but they were three very important days for Christmas preparedness.

I’m not totally screwed here. We were almost on top of things except for S-T-O-C-K-I-N-G S-T-U-F-F.

Oh crap, my kids can spell now.

We are going a little stir crazy. These things have all happened in the past hour:

1) Ian punched me in the nose trying to hug me.

2) Claudia and I got into an argument about wearing jeans with no underwear. I said it would be uncomfortable she vehemently disagreed.

3) Ian called me into the bathroom because he pooped in the shape of a “C”.

I need to get out of the house.

Why must you hate?

Is this because I called you the lower house? I want you to know I didn’t make that up as an insult. They taught me that in school.

And I don’t know what you heard, but what I said was that we should legalize slots.

How in 2009 do we have school busses* without seat belts?

And why are we all okay with this?

___

Don’t get me wrong. In the fall I am putting my children on the bus with a wave and a smile. I am just puzzled by this disconnect.

* Spell check tells me that busses is not a word. What is the plural of bus?

But it was a bouquet of flowers.

For me!

And it came without a card.

I asked Gabe if he sent me flowers. He said “No, but I should have.” (I thought that was a pretty good answer) It isn’t from the kids, or my parents or my in-laws.

It is a lovely spring arrangement and I have no idea who to thank.

I would think maybe they delivered it to the wrong place, but my name and address were on the shipping label.

Here are my only theories:

1) I sit on a few advisory boards. Maybe one of them sent the flowers and forgot to take credit.

2) I have done some consulting work for a large organization. About two months ago they asked for my address so that they could send me something. I never got anything. Maybe they sent them.

3) I have a lot of jobs, freelance and otherwise. It is possible that one of the blogs I write for sent them to me. Possibly for mother’s day.

4) I won a contest for a bouquet of flowers and then forgot about it.

5) I have a secret admirer.

_

I am going to guess that #5 is the least likely since I am grumpy, I can’t seem to stop gaining weight and I don’t bathe nearly as often as I would like to. But who knows? Maybe some people like that.

Did you send me flowers?

Is there a tiny needle somewhere in my computer? In the iPod?

Right. Because if I had time to go to a doctor’s appointment once a week during normal business hours and felt confident that I could have someone watch my kids without having to make anybody take time off work and rearrange their lives for my personal issues I wouldn’t be this fucking freaked out in the first place.

Ahem.

Anyway, I started the medicine yesterday. I’ll let you know how it goes. They say it takes a while to kick in. I’ve had a great week, but of Tammy and her kids have been here to keep us busy and keep me company. Let’s see how I handle leaving the kids for four days next weekend. Ha! Just kidding. I’ll be the drunk girl throwing the party on the airplane. I love my children, but I need this break.

I’ve gotten e-mails and phone calls from my real life friends and family asking why I hadn’t told them about feeling depressed before. There are a couple of reasons. First, I think I just realized what was going on. Even more importantly I think it is part of it. Usually I am the first person to contact everyone I know if something is going on in my life. When I suspected Gabe was out shopping for my engagement ring I called at least four people. When I thought I was being blog-stalked I sent out a mass e-mail to about seven of my real life friends who blog and asked them if someone from Fredericksburg kept showing up on their site meters. (Okay, so maybe it turned out to be me. But I still feel justified because I don’t live in Fredericksburg. I don’t even really live near Fredericksburg. How was I supposed to know it was me?) I think the fact that I wasn’t talking about it made it even more apparent to me that something was wrong. I mean – I’m the one that has to post and tell the whole interweb every time Ian poops more than three times in one day.

That reminds me. Did I tell you guys that Ian pooped in the bathtub yesterday? Gross.

Gabe pointed out to me that I forgot to tell you something else that is pretty pertinent to what is really going on. I don’t really talk about my period much on here. I have a lot of male readers and even though most of you guys are Dads and you know all about menstrual cycles I’m guessing you don’t really want to come here to read about mine. Either way, my mood swings, or my “bad days” seem to be directly related to my hormones. The worst moods come right before my period. You could almost call it PMS, except I feel like I get unusually angry.

I had this problem right before I got pregnant the first time too. For some reason instead of just crying at commercials and never being able to get enough to eat (which is my regular PMS) I hate the world and feel personally affronted by almost everything. Before I had kids I figured that I would go to a doctor and see if they would give me some Valium or Xanax just for the really bad days at work. This time it seems to be more mixed with complete lack of motivation.

But still, I do have a lot of good days. Yesterday I was fine. My point is that I don’t want to kick my cats every day. I am having a cyclical thing. Somebody told me the other day that they made a Prozac just for PMS. Maybe that is more along the lines of what I need. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m going to see my doctor on Wednesday.

Gabe also pointed out to me that I probably don’t realize that I am actually still getting a lot done. It just doesn’t feel like it. Just him telling me that he thinks I am doing a good job makes a huge difference. I think a lot of the time I think that I am letting him down by not getting to all of the laundry, but I forget that he knows these kids pretty well. The phrase he used yesterday was “I know what you are up against all day”.

I also hope everyone understood that it isn’t so much that I thing being depressed is trendy (even though it is certainly socially acceptable these days) I just think that writing about it in a blog setting is done a lot. Sometimes it is really over done. I’m sure I could have plenty of discussions at BlogHer about my minivan and Pampers vs. Huggies too. I’m usually the number one cheerleader for any of my friends getting pharmaceutical assistance when they have felt like it would help. I’m not sure why I am feeling so sheepish about it now that it’s me.

No matter what I really appreciate all of your comments yesterday. It has been really helpful to know that other people get what I was trying to say. I’ll get to the Christian thing too. I’ll probably get to the “20 Eyes” video as well, now I just have to catch the kids when they are both willing to sing for the camera.