It's Really All About the Comedy..Really...

Hey, it's my first blaaaggggghhhhh post! I chose today to finally start this because I've spent most of the morning having a spectacular nervous breakdown...not my nineteenth, I'd say more like nineteen thousandth. So nice to know that some things don't change, once an everloving mess, always an everloving mess. With that kind of a start to the day, the thing should pretty much write itself.

It's been a good one--the breakdown, I mean. And by "good" I mean that I was having fond thoughts toward the giant bottle of kids' Tylenol-with-codeine tucked up there in the cupboard. (Seriously, you should see the size of the bottle we got when our 2-year-old broke his arm, I think they misjudged his weight by a few hundred pounds or kilos, we used maybe a teaspoon out of this quart-size-looking thing the drugstore sent us home with...although now the patient is 3 years old, so it could be expired...see, it probably wouldn't have worked anyway, I think I heard somewhere that narcotics lose their potency when they get too old, which sounds like a metaphor I don't feel like developing, so I won't). But then, after the codeine thought I had a fleeting thought about how much I'm looking forward to Dancing with the Stars tonight, double elimination excitement, too much to live for on a Wednesday to think of quaffing a quart of codeine over a momentary meltdown.

So there I was, all over the floor, in the kitchen, sobbing and quaking, using loud verbiage (all of which probably made the neighbors think I was watching Sybil or The Exorcist, or maybe playing both simultaneously), shaking my fist at the heavens about what an over-the-hill, washed-up, used-up, waste-of-talent, hopeless piece of uselessness I've turned out to be. Really, it was great, you shoulda been here, skip the premiere of Grey's Anatomy and just hang out at my house.

My 3-year-old son, Calvin, caught the act live, but he has autism and tends not to notice when I'm out of sorts, not so you can tell anyway-- for example, today he just seemed to find the whole episode a delightful opportunity to get down on the floor with me and blissfully nuzzle his head into any part of my body he could expose skin on (per usual), cooing and giggling and chortling with glee, totally unfazed by conduct from his mother that would have been most appropriate for a mental patient on the ward that the medicine fairy forgot to visit. (Which one of us has the disability again?)

Anywho, why so glum, mum?

Well, firstly, there are a few days of every month that are turning out to be very dangerous for me, hormonally speaking. And if you're someone who thinks that's just a cop out and/or excuse that women use to explain away bad moods and behavior, you're entitled to your opinion, but you should honestly fold said opinion up until it's all sharp corners and go fuck yourself with it. (See what happened there? With the language and the overreacting? I think I make my point.)

But beyond the biochemistry, there's also the little matter of personal finance. Oh glorious failure, welcome back! I don't know what it is with me, honestly. I mean, if you ran into me at the Stop Rite, it's not like you'd be thinking to yourself "this woman couldn't make enough money to help adequately support herself and her family if she were Paris Hilton's dumpy older sister." I look ok, especially all cleaned up for grocery shopping. And if you ask anyone who's known me over the four decades I've been on this ride, many would tell you how "promising" I've always been.

Promising--that's how one of my grad school mentors, my favorite and my best, once introduced me to a bunch of her colleagues. "Please meet Tracy Stroh, one of our most promising candidates." I've never forgotten her words, not to mention others so much like them, from pre-K through the Ivy league, all those folks I've totally bamboozled with my promises of promisingness.

Maybe I should have asked them all what it was that I was actually promising, because I don't think I've ever gotten that part down. There's that devil in the details again. Which is what always seems to land me face down on the kitchen floor, over and over. It makes me think of a short story by Lorrie Moore, a story called "Willing," and the lines that go,

"She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hairbrush and told, 'There you go.' She'd stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush."

Now THERE'S an everloving mess after my own heart. Can you be separated at birth from a twin if she's in a piece of short fiction? Guess not. You get my meaning, though.

And so, here you have it, my first post. Not terrible for someone who started the day like I did. Because, in the spirit of "this too shall pass," and as someone said in Monty Python movie, with an British accent which makes it funnier, "I got better." I'm sitting here, healthy as a horse, typing away rapid fire, kids peacefully watching the Noggin channel where they appear to be learning Chinese phrases, all's right with the world--and I'm so sure that, sooner or later, something too funny not to make me a millionaire will spill out here. There, I said it. I am so sure!

How long is a blaaaaaaaghhhhhh post supposed to run? Do I keep on blaaaaaghing, or do I save some of these gems for tomorrow? Well, Gracie is now saying, "I really gotta tell you somefin," and Calvin is yanking me with all his 40 pounds of weight toward the source of his white-grape juice supply, which means my time at the keyboard is over for a while, I guess that decides it. (OK, let's be honest, that kind of thing has been going on the whole time I've been writing this, so excuse the inexcusable errors and/or awkwardnesses, it comes down to I either blog with the little darlings chastising me the whole way through or I don't blog at all.)

So tomorrow it is. And tomorrow will come, no codeine for me...although it would take a quart to make a dent in my caffeine exposure for the day, but we'll save that, my favorite, most beloved addiction, for another post.