i was all nicely absorbed in my tedious, melancholic self-reflection there, but suddenly i find myself drawn into being pissed off about real-life drama. i'm not too keen on my husband right now - people i love, so when people i moderately tolerate come into view, i am acutely irritated by their very existence. i am not particularly kind, i don't suppose, but neither am i overtly mean or judgmental. maybe i am overtly judgmental actually, but not mean. i don't condescend to people. i just state my facts as i know them with my typical passion thrown in of course. aleks is obsessed with this ramones song right now. he runs around the table in the dining room while singing it. he calls it the "oh yeah" song and we fight over the cd player over and over. two songs later is an elliot smith song he refuses to let me listen to. sebastian flicked smoothie all over the dining room with his straw and i said, "this is why i hate children," under my breath. of course, like any good mother, i don't really mean it. of course. they are pretty cute after all. i have nothing interesting to write. my self-obsession seems to have subsided for the moment, so i cannot sit and reflect endlessly on why everything sucks for me or for the world. elliot smith finally made it on without aleks noticing, so i can sink into a nice warm puddle of despair. what can i despair about? the state of my relationship with jon's ever-present but fluctuating depression and the moodiness that accompanies it and how i struggle to support him through this, taking the children on excursion after excursion, abandoning my own aspirations (though admittedly i was markedly ambivalent about them), and all the while getting almost no thanks and therefore drinking and smoking too much, the latter the greatest of crunchy sins? the empty place in my stomach that churns when i think of mothering and all i left and all the terrible stinky drama the internet inspires, how part of me misses it, but part of me is disgusted i stayed as long as i did in that addiction and that i still participate and get worked up over our own local board and the discussions there? my struggle to be a good mom, to not scream at my children, to teach them, to facilitate their learning and not want to throttle them half the time even as they fight over blocks and make ungodly loud noises at me and each other? my feeling of lacking something that belongs to me or in some way proves my worth as a person in this society, intimately related to my lack of affirmation that anything i do is good at all, though there are certainly moments when fellow housewives admire my home, the things that i own, my baking or my entertaining skills and then i feel like i should be dressed in heels and curled hair like some goddamned donna reed clone though i'm sure i look exactly like the modern version of that with my choicest outfits donned for occasions of visitors, my properly mussed hair, my jewelry, my makeuped face (good lord i am donna reed!)? i think perhaps i've hit on something here - what does it say about me that i go to bars after the children are sleeping with my girlfriend to chainsmoke and as usual overestimate my ninety-two pounds' ability to metabolize three beers in two hours and meet random hipster-potentially-gay guys who gasp at the fact that these ninety-two pounds have created two children and high-five at the fact of their intactness and get wide-eyed at the truck-that-fell-out-of-the-sky story which i always bring up when i'm drunk? what kind of fucking mother am i then? when i stumble home at two-thirty in the morning and shower the smoke off as best i can and climb into bed and nurse the baby with my drunken breasts? what does it say about me that i do this while taking such care to not vaccinate my children, to not shoot mercury and other neuro-toxins into their veins; such care to feed them organic, now nearly-vegan, always whole highly nutritious foods; such care to not send them to school to have their love of life and love of learning drilled out of them by the rote memorization required for standardized testing; such care to give birth to them at home to keep them safe from cold hands, harsh lights, super-microbes invented on linoleum, eager nurses and doctors who order spinal taps for infection or inject drugs in my (and thereby their) bloodstream; such care to take them all over town exposing them to art, culture, diversity, civic, environmental, and personal responsibility; such care to honor their abilities to know their own bodies and when they are hungry, tired, hurt, sad, angry, joyful??? does it simply imply that i am burnt out? or does it say that i have failed, that i am a hypocrite, that i should know better? does it say that i am human and imperfect, that i know my own limits and honor the space that i need? or does it just say that i am muddling through all of this as best as i can? surely i am not totally void of conviction here. surely i am not just a miserable excuse for a human being. surely i am just in deep need of some comfort, some nurturing and i get it however i can take it and my friends who are also miserable love company and can at least commiserate and respect that we all get through it however we have to and it'll get better and it'll get worse again and fuck it, maybe-gay guys are fun and it feels good to make someone's eyes light up, to be shown deep respect for my intelligence, even in a hipster bar on a nice autumn night.