Doing The Best I Can

Do you ever get the feeling that nothing you do is right? And that no matter how hard you try, you can't make anyone happy, including yourself? And that it might just be easier if you could crawl in a hole with your Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and copious amounts of alcohol and just let the world pass you by for a while? Well, I've been having that feeling for a while and I have to say, Blogger going down in the middle of it all did nothing to improve my mood. Not being able to update, myself, was bad enough. But when I realized nobody else could update, either, and I was going to have to make do without my reading list to distract me for some unspecified length of time? Well, it wasn't pretty.

So why can't I find my happy place lately? Awww...that's so sweet of you to be concerned. Well. There's a lot actually. To start off with, Oscar and I are having Marital Issues. And yes, they are worrisome enough to warrant the capital letters. We're doing our best to get through them. Fighting tooth and nail, actually, if you want to know the truth. It's exhausting, and terrifying, and there are days when all I want to do is cry "uncle" and make it all stop. But we love each other too much to let go without trying to find a compromise that will allow us both to be happy again. So we push through. But not without considerable strain on both our parts.

Then there's Snark's Mistress. Part of the beauty of our relationship is that I seldom need to worry about our relationship. She is like my sister, without all of the petty sibling rivalry crap we might have had to contend with, had we actually been blood-related. She is my rock and she grounds me. But now we have this thing between us. And we don't talk about this thing, even though we both know it's there. And it's causing us both anxiety. See, she's moving to Flagstaff in August to finish school. And though we both know that of all the places she could be going to school, Flagstaff is significantly closer than most, and we will still, in all likelihood, see each other all the time, it will not be the same as it has been. And we're both a little afraid of what it will be. So we don't talk about this thing that's between us. And that's a strain, too.

So with two of the most important relationships in my life causing me significant distress right now, you can imagine how every other little thing that goes wrong during the course of a day takes on that much more importance, right? Like when I got home from driving Oscar to work yesterday and my cell phone dropped my call with McMama just as I was opening the door to retrieve Turtle, only to find he'd spilled his Cheerios all over the floor and had Cheerio residue all over his face, hands and clothes, and when I finally was able to get him out of the car without mashing said Cheerios into the carpeting, and turned around to find that the Maricopa County officials had left another note about our pool which is actually chemically balanced now, thankyouverymuch, and was only the faintly green color it was because of the damn dust storm the night before but it doesn't matter because I have to escort another inspector out to my pool in another day or so to prove that there IS NO MOSQUITO LARVAE IN MY POOL SO STOP CALLING THE OFFICIALS, I think maybe you can understand why that made me a little mad?

I mean, it's not even like I blame the poor Maricopa County officials. They're just doing their jobs. But my neighbors? I blame them. I really wish we lived in a neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else and we bring brownies to each other and know what's happening in each other's lives. Instead, I live in a neighborhood where each person is only interested in what's going on with himself, unless your tree is dropping leaves in his yard, in which case, he's interested in you insofar as he needs you to trim your tree. And that's exactly why I have Maricopa County officials dropping by, because my neighbors don't care enough to stop by personally and ask if there's any particular reason our pool looked dirty, because they have kids and they're worried about West Nile, and could we maybe just clean it up a bit, please? I would respect that. It would embarrass the hell out of me, but I would respect that. Anonymous calls to Maricopa County every other week, I have less respect for.

But I digress. The point I'm making is that things kind of suck right now, and while I'd like to pretend that everything is fine and be cute and witty and clever and funny, talking about things of little consequence, like yogurt (of which, by the way, I tried the Pina Colada version, and it was not gritty, and it had actual chunks of pineapple in it, and I actually enjoyed it, so the problem was TOTALLY the banana thing,) the suckage is major enough that I can't promise it won't invade this space from time to time. And I hope that's okay. Because as much as I might like to say "Oh, I'm only writing this for me...." the fact of the matter is that I care that you're here. So. Bear with me for a bit, and I'm hoping things will improve soon and we'll all look back on this and laugh because could I have BEEN any more of a drama queen???? I'm crossing my fingers, anyway.