Counting the days and hours...

[sinanju]

...til I'll be alone in the house on Wednesday. I'm taking the day off, snippy will be at work, and twoson will be at his dad's for almost two weeks over the Christmas/New Year's holidays. We'll be taking Oneson and friend (who are visiting this weekend) back to his dad, along with Twoson. I will be able to sleep as late as I like and then have the day to myself until my sweetie comes home. No kids, no television blaring at me nonstop, no kid spoor littering the living room, just...me, myself and I until evening, when I can spend the evening (and the next couple of days) with my lovely and talented wife. I can't wait!

Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes now. I sent the lyrics to this song off to someone for the Highlander Lyric Wheel, but I'm tempted to write my story about them (I always want to write something around the lyrics I choose--and almost never find the lyrics I receive at all interesting). Maybe I will. It's not like the Lyric Wheel police will come and arrest me.

snippy is having a hard time of it lately. Finding out that your mother is dying, even if you've been estranged for years, will do that. Then add in the stress of dealing with the rest of her estranged family while dealing with this, and it's even harder. Toxic people, someone told her once. Some people are simply too toxic to spend time with; and you can never be mentally healthy enough not to suffer from dealing with them, any more than you can be healthy enough to interact with any other sort of toxin safely. There are plentiful good reasons why she cut herself off from them years ago, reasons that only the two or three brief visits in their presence have brought forcefully to her attention, and mine. After a few hours with her family, I can see in her--in her body language and her face and her emotional reactions to things. "Toxic people" ain't just an expression.

And this all comes on top of more generalized stress. Moving her office, which dredged up more issues from her childhood, for instance. And the ongoing issue of twoson's school attend lack of school attendance. He's probably missed more school days so far than he's attended since Labor Day, and we're about out of ideas for how to handle it aside from simply backing off and letting him deal with the consequences. But that's true on numerous fronts currently. Hysteria, mulish obstinacy, sullen resentment of advice or suggestions--can you tell he's a teenager? We sure as hell can.

I'm pissed off worn out with it myself. I want him to go his dad's ASAP. snippy and I need a vacation from parenthood. She needs a vacation from her life right now; she needs me, and I need the energy to give her the support she needs and wants and deserves, and we're both feeling, to quote Bilbo Baggins, "like butter scraped over too much bread."

I want so badly to make her feel better, and while she tells me I'm helping, I know it isn't enough--because I can't make things okay. Most of what's wrong is out of our control. All I can offer is love and sympathy and help and a shoulder to cry on occasionally. And I'm glad I have those to offer, but I want to do more and I can't. Nobody can. So I do what I can, provide as much support as possible, and we muddle through.

We saw The Return of the King today. snippy and I sat together, and the three kids sat together elsewhere in the theatre. This was not an accident (though we couldn't have all sat together even if we'd wanted--the line ahead of us was very long). I enjoyed the movie, as did snippy, though she commented that she'd seen enough of "big-eyed Frodo" and "the searchlight of Sauron" to last her a while.

And, boy, I've been reading way too much slash fanfic* the last few years. I can't count the number of times I saw slash-fic fodder in that film--in dialogue, in body language, in expressions. I didn't use to see these things; now they pop off the screen at me.

*Especially considering that I'm not a slash-fic fan. I just like fanfic, and the vast majority of fanfic, in my experience, simply is slash, like it or not.

Comments

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

It's not like the Lyric Wheel police will come and arrest me.

Oh LIKE HELL WE WON'T!

In reality, I know how that is. I have several times uhm, written a story withouth thinking of the lyrics, because well, they sucked. Once I even had the story started before the wheel even began, and simply finished it.

I am a bad bad person.