biochemistry vs the fancy giraffe

I’ve worked for almost three months straight without taking any time off, but next week is the beginning of vacation season. We’re not going away anywhere and since I have the week of Christmas off, I have some time to burn before the end of the year. So I’m taking a few days off here and there and for the next few months I will be rarely working a full week. As for what I plan on doing with my time, I know it’s fall and then it will be winter, but this place needs some serious spring cleaning. My home is getting gross and I’m afraid that one day I will lose Joey in a random pile of dust bunnies.

Joey’s school is working out great now that they’ve hired a new teacher. Now instead of crying when we drop him off, and coming home with no information for us about how his day went, leaving us to assume from his physical state that he spent the day rolling around in a pile of dirt, he comes home with art projects and sings songs around the house that we’ve never heard and gets very excited on the mornings when he goes to school.

I can't describe the sheer delight I experience when Joey comes home from school with a new piece of art. He has brought home little paper puppets, a picture of himself pasted into the middle of a paper plate decorated with leaves, and an amusing assortment of simple pictures like a fire engine or a duck, that he has lovingly colored in himself with markers.

The giraffe is my favorite. I can't look at it without laughing because it is so delightfully absurd. I've decided to take it to work and put it up at my desk, because some days I need to be reminded that life is not all that serious. And when people ask me how old my son is I will say that he is ten.

In terms of balance, Eli has been taking a lot of responsibility for Joey lately, and I’ve been focusing on work maybe a little too much. And perhaps I need to dial the intensity down a notch. Or eight. So that’s what’s going on around here. To sum up the last few weeks: I can’t believe I lived so long without owning an iPod, watching a good superhero show can perk me up after a shitty day, and there is no such thing as too much coffee. Or sex. Oh, and on a related note, you haven’t felt mortification until you’ve gone to the drugstore to purchase a pregnancy test with your tired toddler who keeps running away from you and pulling things off the shelves and finally throwing himself down on the floor while the cashier stares at you the whole time in horror, likely making silent judgments in her head and wondering why a person who can’t keep her kid from tossing tins of altoids around in front of her register like confetti would even attempt to bring another child into the world.

When it comes to drugstore chemistry, and two exhausted parents of a toddler, one line is good.

Comments

[Morgan]

Heros, right? My boyfriend has been working 12 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week for about the last month. And then that show comes on television and his world becomes a much, much better place. It's cute.

Best giraffe ever, of course. It made me giggle.

[Sherry]

Just wanted to tell you that I miss reading you! I hope you're doing well and that everything is okay.

[hubs]

where did you go?