I am overwhelmed.  Philip moves to California on Sunday.  Without us.  I will be single parenting for almost two months.  He’s taking a truck so he can move some of our stuff down and take all the things he’ll need to be living a bachelor life for two months.  So I’m trying to organize all that and my head is buzzing.

Next Monday he has a job interview with a company he really wants to work for that’s located in Petaluma.  If he were to get it he would have an easy commute and have benefits and also get paid considerably more than he is now.  BENEFITS!  He was told that dependents are not covered 100%.  Who cares?  The main thing is that if we get insurance through a job we can’t be pre-screened and refused coverage.  Please send him good thoughts on Monday.

Max was sick for 10 days.  Really sick.  So sick he missed a whole week of school.  And exhausted his mother.  Now he just has a lingering cough but is otherwise recovered.

I’m amazed at his resiliency in some areas and rigidity in others.  His food issues remain challenging and you’d think a person who can stubbornly cling to resentment over things like the doctor who told him the nose cauterization wouldn’t hurt – three years later and he’s still steaming mad any time the subject comes up.  When we told him we were moving he was angry with us.  We were out to dinner and I told him before we got our food.  He lost his appetite for the rest of the evening.  But by the next day he wasn’t angry any more.  I asked him and he said “I’m not happy about moving but I’m not mad any more.”  Just like that, he let go.  He doesn’t want to move because he likes it here and naturally doesn’t want to leave his friends.  But he really only has three friends and he rarely hangs out with any of them any more.  He admitted that this is true.

Mostly he doesn’t want to move because he hates sunshine and warm weather like I do.  He likes the cooler climate of Oregon.  He likes rain.  And snow.  And cold weather.  Getting used to the weather in Santa Rosa will be a shared challenge between him and I.  We will buy really big fans.

I need to do some more packing for Philip.  I also need to go to the store to buy him clothes for his interview.  He’ll need them for other interviews too.

There is exactly one good thing about Philip being gone from us: I get the bed to myself.  But after a while the excitement of getting to spread out and not have someone sleeping in the MIDDLE of the bed will wear off.

My garden is completely covered in super tall quack grass.  I keep worrying about the yard because I have no time to do anything for it and no money to spend on someone else doing things like mowing it and cutting down blackberries and I know the city will come and give us a citation when we’re gone and all that grass gets taller.  I know my neighbors already hate me.  Plus, I feel bad for the house.  Who knows how long it will take this house to foreclose – the other one took TWO YEARS.  Finally it has passed out of purgatory into new hands.  Which is a relief.

I’m really worried about the yard.  I guess I’ll see if I can pay some landscaping company to mow and whack some things back in a quick and hacking way just to keep it under control.  I don’t know.

I just know that I keep concentrating my worries on the wild yard.

Time to get my act together.  It’s time to concentrate on what needs to be done now.  Like, right now.

Plus, I can’t get the word “scrotum” out of my head and I’m not even sure how it got there.

SCROTUM.

Enjoy your Thursday!