The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie

We have the Sunday blues today. Odie is moping around. I am feeling bored, restless, and trapped by the rain. V is having mood swings like an adolescent. The dog is shivering in a corner, making a puddle of drool as she pants over how the thunder is going to kill her. Our cats are smacking the shit out of each other.

It’s just one of those days.

I am working hard today to convince myself that it’s all in my head. When I think about MY life, in my little corner of the world, things look pretty good. I have a home, a job, a family, and the luxury of complaining. But if I do something seemingly innocuous, like watch Bill Maher looking for a laugh, I’m filled with worry and angst over the state of the world. Was it always this horrible and depressing, and I was just oblivious in my younger years? Surely war, famine, natural disaster and class warfare have been with us for centuries. Religious people have been crying “END TIMES!” since the week Christ was crucified. If you want to sound like a wise prophet, just predict war, famine, political unrest and natural disaster.

I don’t believe in the prognostications of Armageddon. I respect the people who do. In fact, I have some ultra-religious friends of varying sects, and I have found that the ultra-religious, when they love you, can tolerate a LOT of unreligious behavior from you. For that, I am grateful to them. I think they even pray for me, which is awfully thoughtful of them.

I have written before about self-serving philosophies. Maybe that’s one of mine. It is too horrible to think that my children will not grow up because the world will end. So I choose not to believe that. And yes, I realize that the “up-side” is that if you are “saved” then you will all be transported to Heaven to spend all of eternity together, so this earthly plane will cease to matter. I’m just very “earthly-planed” in my particular beliefs, and I’m going to go ahead and keep believing that we’re going to be around for a long time. I’m reading “Physics of the Future” by Michio Kaku to help me towards that end. Fascinating stuff.

I live in Southern California, where every time it rains, people start moaning that we need to build an ark. I guess I’ve learned to be immune to some of that “The Sky is Falling!” talk.

But the pessimism and fatalism seep in. It’s easy to get sad and hopeless when you listen to the news. And if you turn it off and shut it out, you can be accused of burying your head in the sand. Being part of the problem. That’s what my father-in-law once said to me when I told him I don’t pay attention to all of that crap on the news.

I think that maybe I will get some books on CD to listen to in the car instead of the news. I don’t like to listen to music, and talk radio is nothing but politics, which is lately nothing but depressing. This must be what the Republicans felt like during the Obama campaign. Defeated.

For the last six months or so, I have been generously making a monthly donation to my local YMCA in the form of a gym membership I never use. Today, I decided that I’m going to start using the pool. I was a swimmer as a child and a teenager. My doctor recommended that I exercise to help with my joint and back pain, and the YMCA has a pool. Today, I bought some prescription goggles for fifteen bucks, and a four-dollar silicone swimming cap. Knowing my tendency to make grand plans that I never follow through with, I am planning to start small. One day this week, I will leave work early, go to the pool, and paddle around a bit. I must remind myself not to attempt the 500 meter freestyle of my youth. I have wanted to go back to swimming for ages, but vanity about my skin and hair have kept me from it. I did some research, and apparently with the right products for both, I can minimize the chlorine damage. My skin already looks like hell from this pregnancy.

Writing about and thinking about positive changes is already turning my mood around a little. V is playing with her Play-doh now, and just announced, “We’re having a party!”

I could use a party right now. Sounds good.

I took the day off of work on Wednesday to sleep. Daylight Savings Time wrecked me (only good reason I can think of to move to Arizona), and despite all of the literature that promises a surge of energy in the second trimester, I haven’t felt it. My belly is finally growing and I look pregnant. No more occasional glasses of wine in public for me. Too many judgmental looks from other patrons. I will still probably continue to steal a sip of Odie’s beer, despite the side-eye the Pregnancy Police throw me. I know people have VERY strong feelings about this issue, but my doctor says the occasional drink (or “odd tipple” as the Brits and Aussies would say) isn’t going to hurt anything this far along in my pregnancy.

Yesterday, I went to a technology training instead of work, and while we were walking to lunch along a busy street, breathing gasoline fumes and second-hand cigarette smoke, it occurred to me that what I was breathing in the city was probably worse for Pringles and me than a few ounces of wine or beer. I’m happy I live in a small suburb where you almost never see anyone smoking a cigarette. As a former smoker, I feel like a happy hypocrite. God, how I hated people like me.

It’s Saturday, my favorite day of the week, and all three of us are happily plugged-in to our various technologies. Odie on World of Warcraft, V glued to “The Wonder Pets,” and me on WordPress. Lately, the weather has been warm and sunny during the work week, and cold and rainy on the weekends. We’ll probably brave the zoo after naptime, since one of V’s favorite activities is alternating between holding her lady bug umbrella and holding her froggy umbrella.

In the spirit of mental health/rest days, Odie took a sub day on Friday while I was at my tech training. He woke me up at 6 a.m., fresh from the shower with the gleeful announcement “No one is learning anything from the Odies today!” He feels horrible guilt over these occasional days off, but I’m glad he took it. The job has been wearing on him lately. It gets to him more than it gets to me, because I have higher self-esteem, and I don’t take it personally when the teens are bored or truculent. It’s the nature of the beast. In fact, I recently had reason to look up the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)’s criteria for sociopathic personality disorder, and it specifies that the person who meets the criteria must be over 18. Why? Well, because ALL teenagers behave like sociopaths at least some of the time. It may be my problem, but is surely isn’t my FAULT.

Sometimes I have to wonder what kind of “intelligent design” made a creature that is at the height of its reproductive potential at the same time it is at its least socially and emotionally evolved. By the time humans have the wisdom, patience, and wealth to be excellent parents, we’re often too old. Rubbing diaper cream onto our babies’ bottoms and wrinkle cream onto our sagging necks.

(Short break to gobble Tums. Ahhhh)

I’m really having a potpourri post this morning. Where I wanted to go with this by way of a long, winding introduction is that sometimes when Odie takes a day off work, I come home to the work of a Virgo Moon. He not only cleaned and did the laundry, he transformed V’s crib (which she’s never slept in) to a toddler bed, put our mattress back on the bedframe, and HAND-SWEPT the carpet (our vacuum cleaner died). I love it when he hand-sweeps the carpet. it’s selfish, I know. Maybe it’s even a little insensitive of me to enjoy his OCD manic episodes as he scuttles around on his hands and knees, poking out his bottom lip in a trance of cleaning. But it works for me! Odie and I are so similar in some ways, that during our courtship, we wondered if we could have a successful marriage, or if we would just reinforce each other’s negative traits. We’re both drinkers, we WERE both smokers (we’ve both quit), we both tend to be lazy procrastinators who abhor housework. In fact we both sort of balk at “doing stuff.” Neither of us cooks. They say opposites attract, but in our case, it was much more of a case of “like attracts like.” I’m pleased to see that life and parenthood has matured us both. Well, life, parenthood, couples’ therapy and compromise. He hand-swept the carpet (and I mean that literally — with his HANDS), but I did the taxes.

Clean carpet and filed taxes not withstanding, to make our weekend even better, I think we may be entering the era of, “Sweetie, go watch cartoons,” while mommy and daddy snuggle in bed. It worked out this morning for a good half hour (the length of an episode of “Micky Mouse’s Clubhouse”) and it was heaven.

If only we hadn’t been out of coffee…