I am sitting in the basement, drinking a big huge Buttery Nipple (and a DrP) and listening to Creed (shut up). I have promised myself that if it takes all night, I’m moving all of my entries from 2003 from .html to Movable Gripe. Right now my journal either looks like it starts mid-2003 or ends mid-2003, depending on if you start at the beginning (Aug ‘00) or now. Since December 2003 I really haven’t had time to work on it.

Seems to be, since December 2003 I haven’t had time to do much, except meet a guy, spend every waking moment with him, get engaged, lose an assistant, get pregnant, alienate my guy’s entire family, plan a wedding, plan a honeymoon, chair a PTA committee, have a baby, have a house built, and lose another assistant. In between there’s been work, parent-teacher conferences, birthdays and other missed holidays. Etc.

I do believe I’ve found the end of my patience, and the end of my coping skills.

I haven’t seen Doug since December. Or was it January? I am overloaded on anti-depressants. (At least, it feels that way.) Yet, I feel like shit and I’m very tired of it. Or maybe I’m just very tired.

The man sitting upstairs holding my baby has been teaching me how to be a computer widow again. I’m tired of being the ignored mistress to an iBook.

I wish I could smoke inside.

I’m tired of taking two steps forward and half a million back at work. It seems that the harder I work to try to catch up, I fall even more behind. Each time I do one thing, it creates another three things to get done. Each day I hit the door planning to be ultra-productive, but now I’m getting tired of it. I was at work til 7p tonight just trying to work my way through a five-inch pile of paperwork that I’ve created in my last five days there. It’s a never-ending battle.

Then, I think that when Jen comes over from AU in three weeks, I’ll be taking at least eight days off work. It makes my hands shake. How in the world will everything get done?

And that’s not even the half of it. Yesterday I spent work time buying paint for trim boards in my basement that I do NOT want to paint, and three hours at the lighting company trying to pick out lights that are going to cost me over $2000 that I do NOT have. And the check is due, um, now.

The house we live in is fine for living in but not for selling. The deck - yes, the same deck I worked on for the entire summer of 2003 - needs to be refinished again. I stand on the 25 x 25 and 30 x 30 monstrosity and want to cry. When in heaven’s name are we going to get that done?

And he types.

Everything needs to be cleaned. I haven’t cleaned our horizontal blinds since I bought the house in 2000. The basement has been a dumping ground for junk for the past year, since he moved in. Even with half of the boxes in the basement moved to the office, it’s still full of shit. And Jen is supposed to live down here during August?

I have not had a moment of “alone-time” since … December 2003. I can’t even believe that I’d ever miss the days of 2002 and 2003, when I dreaded weekends because they stretched like a huge empty yawn in front of me, with nothing to do and no one to do it with. I guess the grass is always greener…

God, Bailey’s is strong.

I dread going to bed at night, because he is like a furnace. He also sleeps like a log, which makes me mad (irrationally) because with taking such a massive dose of one of my anti-deps, I hardly sleep at all. I nap on and off all night. My brain runs a million miles an hour, with ideas and things I’ve not done or things that I just realized need to be done. And then I watch the clock, knowing that I have to be up in a few short hours, and knowing that when I hit the ground again it will just be a big waste of time.

But he types.

Sometimes I wonder if the people at diary-x.com understand how good they have it. You can go and get a piece of my husband for free. I have to be scheduled in.

And then, there’s the journalling script he’s writing to try to compete with Movable Snipe. He will not lose his place as the Rock God of Journalling, dammit. Good for him. It’s good to have your place in this world.

It just makes me wonder where my place is. Should I be at home, making my place as a mom? Should I be banging my head against the brick wall I call work, fighting the good fight to get people to do what’s best for themselves when they don’t want to (or don’t believe I’m trying to do just that)?

And where is God in this mess? Why is it so much easier to follow his laziness than my own faith? I haven’t opened my Bible in weeks, months. I’m not even sure where it is. “Do not be unequally yoked…” What a fallacy I thought that was. When will I learn to trust God instead of myself?

Unhappy, that’s me. Beyond the ability to weed it out, shake it off. Beyond the ability to communicate and confront and work it out. I just don’t think I care anymore. It’s like cycles in my life repeating. I’ve done this one already. I was never going to do it again. And here I am, spinning in the middle of it.

Maybe I’m just too stressed to try right now. What do I place a higher priority on? Again, I’m at a place where I have to do what is highest priority, and nothing else. But at least he made a new template.

I’d better get back to the eternal cut-and-paste. After all, who knows when I’ll force-feed myself some more selfish free time? It only comes … once every year and a half, apparently.

An artificial season
Covered by summer rain
Losing all my reason
‘Cause there’s nothing left to blame

Shadows paint the sidewalk
A living picture in a frame
See the sea of people
All their faces look the same

So I sat down for awhile
Forcing a smile
In a state of self-denial
Is it worthwhile?

Sell my pity for a dime
Yeah, just one dime

Plain talk can be the easy way
Signs of losing my faith
Losing my faith

So I sat down for awhile
Forcing a smile
In a state of self-denial
Is it worthwhile?
Sell my pity for a dime
Yeah, just one dime
Selling, selling my pity for a dime and another man take my soul

Being selfish to stay sane,
m.