Monsters ate my babies

The more stressful my job gets, and the past month has been getting REALLY stressful, the more despair I feel about working full-time. It’s far too much with just a regular work load, but with two or three jobs on top of my regular work load, my brain overloads. My job is eating me, eating what’s left of my creative drive, spitting out the bones and ground-down teeth at the end of each work day meal. Yuck.

Oh, but today is Friday, once again, my favorite day of the week, what with two whole days following Friday that I get to play with my kids, sit above ground in the sunshine, breath non recirculated, mold and vinyl-filled air, stand for good portions of the days. I start feeling like myself again by the time Sunday rolls around, just in time to go back to the bowels of darkness.

Kindergarten

My darlings registered for Kindergarten yesterday! Can you believe it? When I started writing on 20/20, four years ago, I couldn’t even imagine them being in preschool much less all grown up and getting their public school education started. What the hell? Where are my little children? I called a boy a little kid as we drove past him today on the way home from preschool, and was promptly corrected by Beenie who said that, “He’s not a little kid. He’s 8 or 9.” And, as usual, she was correct. But I group everyone in the shorty section as being a little kid. Beenie happens to be the size of an 8 or 9 year old in some instances, but she’s still little. I can’t understand how Beenie and Mimi transformed from the extreme of infancy to the articulate, crazed, bull-headed geniuses they are today. And I guess it is true, that they are growing older and so am I. The school bus will be collecting them starting in late August. I’m glad I won’t be waiting at the stop with them, weeping. That’s gonna be Dada’s job.

I’m actually pretty excited about their school. It’s only a year or two old, is a LEED certified building with a green roof and really lovely spaces. It would be nice if the spaces were larger, though, because there are way more kids in that school than it was built to house. I think there’s something like 5 or 6 Kindergarten classes starting in the fall. There were two classes when I started Kindergarten in 1972 (ouch, that was a long time ago!) – the morning class and the afternoon class. Now it is a whole day. Though, luckily, unlike when I was little, my children will not be served whole milk every day for a snack. I was sick constantly when I was little, and it was because I can’t really eat or drink dairy products. And one of my children can’t either. The world is a kinder place for us these days. So many fake dairy treats!

It is easier to write when I am filled with anxiety. Maybe I can poop out a book in the next few weeks, sell it and future books for one billion dollars,  and stop this rat race mumbo jumbo altogether. Bleech.