Ahh – meat.

*Mother Fucking God Dammed Whore-Faced Git and Go Fuck Yourself You Son of a Bitch*

Apparently I am the Universe’s bitch.  And I just found out it’s into bondage.

This sums up Monday through Thursday adequately.

The last breath that threatened to blow my house down was finding out that Bill Hader is leaving Saturday Night Live.  I am devastated.  Heartbroken.  Desolate.  Unbeknownst to him, we are Cuckoo-eyed twins.  I love his teeth.  I love his comedic genius.

Never-the-less: It’s all going to be okay. Maybe not today. Maybe not next week, but eventually and for a few days. And then it will all fall apart again. Life ebbs and flows. The light never stops giving balance to the dark. So it’s going to be okay again for a while when it stops sucking. Word.

While Tuesday was a hatchet-faced whore, Wednesday (traditionally an adversary of mine) has somehow sprouted wings and possibly saved Thursday and Friday from complete annihilation.  The bad persists in that Philip was home for a third day in a row – and he’s a man who is rarely stopped by sickness (turns out to be Labyrinthitis) and Max came home from school with a horrid sore throat.  I’m already wicked tired so I was ready to consign Wednesday to a napalm cocktail when it suddenly redeemed itself kind of late in the day.

First – I went to get popsickles for Max to soothe this throat and because I could and because I needed to do something unplanned and fun I rode my scooter through the warm air to the Asian market where I spent a good hour locating a mere 4 items on a list of things a couple of friends might enjoy receiving in the mail.  I find it exciting and simultaneously calming to shop in Asian markets even though there’s so little I can buy for myself in them (so much fish and meat) but the jars and boxes and packages of dried things entice and fascinate and give great pleasure.

Second – when I came home Max came downstairs in all his painful misery to watch something on “television”.  He could have done that upstairs so I knew he wanted to be near his parents.  We watched a couple of episodes of Bob’s burgers and then I suggested we watch the first episode of Arrested Development because it’s been my quiet plot to get him to watch it for a while now knowing that it’s exactly the kind of humor he would enjoy.  He agreed.  I was surprised and pleased.  We started watching and immediately he was sucked into it as I predicted he would be.

Third – in the middle of watching the first episode of Arrested Development Max said he was hungry and asked if he could have a veggie burger with lettuce on a hamburger bun.  People – I have been making many batches of whole wheat hamburger buns in the last month but I had none on hand tonight.  I offered him egg toast or sugar toast but he drooped in that disappointed way that kills me when his disappointment is because I don’t have the makings for something he wants to eat that I would consider a major triumph.  He wanted a goddamned veggie burger and I was unprepared.  Because that’s how it happens all the time.  I asked if I should go out and acquire buns for his veggie burger and he lit up.  Lit up – for a fucking veggie burger.  He wanted it with LETTUCE.  No lie.  So I went to acquire some buns.

The only kind of buns available of an acceptable uniformity and lack of messy seeds or bran on the tops are pure white hamburger buns.  White and nutritionless shite.  He loves whole wheat but he loves uniformity and wrinkle-less bun tops more.  If this is the vehicle available to deliver to him some lettuce and mushrooms and grains – I know my place in the universe.  I’m going to get on my damn Vespa and cruise off to the store because I’m its bitch and it likes to punish me.

Whatevs.

There are many ways my efforts could have been rewarded.  With complete failure – like the kid requested the veggie burger but once in front of him he changes his mind.  The bun is wrinkled.  There is some speck of weirdness on the food.  Or he could eat it and enjoy it.

Tonight he ate 3/4 of a veggie burger on a white bun with ketchup and mustard and two pieces of romaine lettuce.

And he loves Arrested Development.

I have stopped playing nice with the school, incidentally.  I have a true and deep respect for public education and for teachers especially but it is not serving my child in any way right now and it is, in fact, detracting from his learning.  I have opted for more plain speaking and bald honesty in dealing with his school because being careful and politic has served me not at all.  So I’ve become the desperate pain-in-the-ass parent I never wanted to become but I brought Max into this world and that makes him a huge priority and being liked by others is never going to take precedence over meeting my child’s needs.

So fuck it all to hell.

I feel like a soldier a lot of the time.

I’m soul-tired.  But it’s okay.

My triumphs are very small.  I take them with gratitude.  My son ate some lettuce today.  He became a fan of Arrested Development.  If the apocalypse arrives tonight I can handle it.

*********

And here it is Friday – FINALLY – and it feels like fucking Sunday.  I wanted to icepick Monday.  By Wednesday I wanted to Napalm this week.  By today it’s become clear that the only way to deal with it is to nuke* the fucking stuffing out of it.  Too many things I’m not at liberty to discuss at the moment – but believe me – if I could I’d spill the whole fucking show for you.

Max has been home sick for 3 days this week.  Philip has been home the whole week.  I’m not awesome is all I have to say.  Except for the part where somehow I managed to make three veggie burgers for Max that he ate and loved.  Last night he wanted to know if he wouldn’t like some vinegar on his next veggie burger so I gave him a little taste of red wine vinegar and balsamic.  He liked the balsamic.  Today he wanted me to drizzle some balsamic on his caramelized onions…

————- let that sink in – picture that shit ————-

Dude liked it.  Except for the part of the bun where I accidentally dripped the balsamic on the bun in a dark splotch.  Kid doesn’t eat dark blemishes on his hamburger buns.  But he just ate a gourmet veggie burger today.  My extreme picky eater.  I know the score – this is going to devolve again into 2 weeks of nothing  but round crackers.  But this – this thing that’s happening – this is a glimpse into a future I have been believing in forever.  Max has the makings of a connoisseur of the things he likes and if only I can stretch that palate he could become a true gourmand in his adulthood.  If only I can maintain the patience not to get angry when the only thing he’ll eat for days is cheese puffs and sugar toast.

I have been developing a relationship with that patience for years.

All day I worked on organizing my kitchen and it feels great.  And then I did all my filing.  And though the things that were bad this week have not vaporized as I demanded them to – and have the potential to be devastating in the near future – I am seeing the good in the disaster.

Like when your skin doesn’t melt in an atomic blast and you’re all “Oh yay!  I might starve to death but at least I’ll starve to death in my actual skin!”.

I will close the week day war with this gem:

Max made up a song he thought was hilarious featuring men putting their wieners in pies. I asked him how he knew about the movie “American Pie” at which his eyes bugged out of his head “There’s an actual movie where someone puts their wiener in a pie?!?!” Proof that “American Pie” was written by a 12 year old.

 

*Someone else pointed out that napalming had become inadequate and suggested nuking and I couldn’t agree more.