Don't bother me I'm writing

The Crazy Parade begins at 4:30 a.m. Monday - Friday. I fall out of bed, drink some coffee, watch the news, stub my toe on the way to the closet where I can't find the clothes I want to wear, I spend too long in the shower, and waste my last 15 minutes at home swearing at the hair dryer and the drawer that ate my eyeliner. That's the calmest part of the day. From there I'm on the freeway with the worst drivers in the world -- idiots who doddle in the passing lane side-by-side with the motorists to their right so it's impossible to get around them -- then I make my living reviewing some the strangest pictures on the Internet, which begs the question at least 100 times an hour, "What is WRONG with people?" I laugh. I scream. I cry. I go home -- venturing out on the road once more with the same idiot drivers who nearly killed me eight hours earlier. I'm greeted at my front door by two children who are so exhausted they're literally bo

I often wonder if I'm speaking in some off-the-wall language that no one other than me can understand. My husband and children for example regard my words with the oddest, glazed-over expressions on their faces like I'm a talking dog -- they're amused by the noises I'm making, but they don't give a crap about the kid in the well. I'll ask Jerod a straight-forward question that requires nothing more than a simple yes or no  -- "I'm really tired. Will you please take Ashlyn so I can go to bed?" "What do you mean?" "I'm tired, and I want to go to bed. Please take the baby." "You want me to bring her upstairs so you can lay down with her?" "I want you to keep her down here for a while so I can get some sleep." "You want me to go to bed?" "MORON! sit HERE with Ashlyn until she falls asleep. It's YOUR turn." "Huh?" Call me crazy, but it doesn&#

I'm nearing the end of my mandatory 100 day break from work. I planned to accomplish so many things -- write a book, organize the house, convince my children to sleep by themselves -- and it seems that all I managed to do was compile a longer list of things that need to be accomplished. Time is funny that way -- as soon as you get some it's gone. Because we all have responsibilities to something other than ourselves -- even narcissists aren't the center of their universes. There's the big stuff -- family and friends and pets that require our constant attention; but the smaller random things like sleeping and eating and hygiene and viruses and telemarketers are the ones that kill me.  Imagining all of the time I'd have if I didn't require sleep or bathroom breaks or food -- if I never got sick -- makes me envious of robots.  My editors used to ask me in advance of deadline how much time I was budgeting for sleep, otherwise I carried on li

My daughters will be grownups one day. They’re going to come home from college with their boyfriends – eventual husbands – and invite them to sleep in our bed with us. The Family Bed – I’m raising the next generation of cult leaders. Here it is -- my deepest, darkest parental failure: In my bedroom there are two beds pushed together -- a queen and a double -- to accommodate every member of the household. My children have never slept their own beds, because Jerod and I suck -- plain and simple. We weren’t prepared for the ugly side of parenthood. Everyone with children warned us, but you really can’t imagine the paradox of joy and misery that comes with a baby until you have one. And we lucked out with Lily. She was practically perfect -- except for her refusal to sleep by herself. It seemed so much easier to make a little space in our bed. We needed sleep – Jerod was a full-time student and I was a full-time newspaper reporter. We made a pact with the Devil -- our preci

My husband suffers from an irritating delusion that he's allowed to decorate our home. There's a Jabba the Hutt drinking glass on my piano. There's a very large frying pan on my ottoman. There's a plastic rat nailed to our house just below the porch light where it's visible to everyone in the neighborhood day and night. Jerod told me this morning that I should thank him -- "I've given you something to write about." Here's the deal I'm an artist and a woman -- decorating is my birthright. It says so in the Bible -- if it doesn't it should. I will lose sleep over a picture's position on the wall -- if it's too high or too low or just a hair off center. I make sketches on graph paper in advance of moving furniture or rearranging artwork. The process of setting up a room that is both interesting and pleasant to look at takes me hours -- HOURS. Then my nimrod husband comes along; moves a side table to the othe

Thank God it's over. I've hated Feb. 14 ever since I was a four-eyed geek with no hope of ever having a boyfriend to fondle in the lunch room. And even when I wasn't a four-eyed geek -- and I could get boyfriends I never managed to have one on Valentine's Day. I was a hideous girlfriend, which karmically explains how I ended up with Jerod -- Mr. Romance, if romance is snoring on the couch with King of the Hill or Moonshiners on television. I gave up on champagne and candlelight many, many years ago. Something in the way Drunk Jerod vomited in the lobby at the Olive Garden on our first dress-up date told me I shouldn't hold my breath for any fantastic gestures with flowers and jewelry and bubble bath. Romance is overrated. I like the cotton grandma panties that come in packs of 20 at Costco. I like sweatpants and hoodies and a bed all to myself. The highlight of Valentine's 2012 was Lily's classroom party, which I -- being a r

Inspiration is a flaky hag. She’s never around when you need her – when you’re depressed and sick and pimply and uglier than the yellow fungus that smokers get on their tongues. And she never frequents the same place twice. Say you caught her once in the pages of your favorite book – you needn’t bother looking there the next time the batteries go dead in your Thinking Cap, because she’ll have found somewhere else to sip her tea or scratch her butt or whatever she does for a jolly. Inspiration is a nasty, vicious, snaggle-toothed tyrant, and I hate her. I’m sad I’m sad that people are clueless -- that people fighting for the 99 percent refuse to comb their hair or talk like the 98 percent who aren’t drinking BONG water. It must be depression or post-PMS.  I just can’t seem to care enough about anything to write myself happy, and it sucks. I’m also pimply and looking very much like the aforementioned yellow fungus. What to do? Don’t

I've turned the granny purse of my soul inside out for a word this week, but none convey the sick I feel in the pit of my stomach. I've been home with a cold, bombarded from every direction with stories about the father who blew up his house on Sunday killing himself and his two sons.  Josh Powell  said he couldn't live without his boys -- Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5 -- and he killed them. It's all I can think about -- Charlie and Braden and all of the others who don't make the headlines. Babies are supposed come home from hospitals in terrycloth pajamas; in car seats that were checked and rechecked -- crash tested -- by overattentive parents.  They're supposed to be jostled awake several times a night by frantic mothers checking for vitals like clumsy nurses. Children are supposed to feel loved and safe. They're supposed to know at the end of the day while they're nodding off to sleep that nothing will make them unlovable. It shouldn

They make things complicated and irritating, and they smell like damp grass and farts. My husband poops with the door open. I yell at him. He leaves it cracked -- the door is still OPEN. It's like he stopped 1 percent shy of closing it on purpose. Why does he do that? I told him this morning while he was nagging me to vacuum: I prefer doing brainless activities in the afternoon. I reserve mornings -- when my brain cells are peppy -- for creative ventures -- writing, art, writing ... All I get is a smug gaze begging "What the hell are you on about now?" He really sucks. And here I am at 11 p.m. writing about my husband, because I'm too slow and brain dead to write about the stuff I wanted to write about. I've started, stopped and saved three posts tonight -- this is my fourth. It will serve as a warning to my significant other that the punishment for f***ing with my creative time is public disclosure of bathroom rituals -- like he even cares. Husb

Writing comes easy some days but most days it feels like I'm pressing my face against a hot burner. I know as soon as I wake up -- it's a good day when I sit down to work without thinking; it's a bad day when the computer glowers at me from my writing desk and I pull the covers over my head and cry. I cry a lot over writing -- I yell and kick things and grit my teeth and pull my hair. I never give up. I sometimes spend entire days staring at my work on the computer screen -- I'm lucky if I go to bed one paragraph ahead of where I was in the morning. That's nuts -- I know it is -- but I keep on doing it, because persistence will eventually deliver a good writing day or maybe two or three. The bitch is, when I come off a string of what I thought were awesome writing days and decide that everything I did was shit. There begins the process of rewriting from every point of view so I end up with  multiple versions of the same chapter narrated in different v