The Chick Magnet

Timothy has two polo shirts — exactly the same except that one is green striped and one is blue striped. I think I got them as a two-fer last summer. Today he wore the blue one and when he got home, said that tomorrow he was going to wear the green one. Since he once tried to wear his pajama shirt to school and doesn’t really seem to care much about his clothing, I asked him why. To which he responded (verbatim), “Jamie told me she liked my shirt. So it’s reasonable to think that if I wear the green one tomorrow, she’ll like that, too.”

My six-year old is making wardrobe choices based on a girl. Hellllllllllllllllllllllllp meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Poor, Poor Me

I have strep throat. I’ve always thought of strep as a childhood illness and yet here I sit, gritting my teeth and breaking out in a cold sweat every time I swallow while the three kids run around like happy little monkeys — singing and yelling and playing and only pausing occasionally to tell me my breath smells funny.

I thought about telling the doctor this morning that I thought I had swine flu, but I decided he probably wasn’t in the mood. The nurses said they had just fielded a call from a woman who was on the Internet and had discovered an outbreak of swine flu recorded in the 1850’s in which 1,000 people had died. The nurses said she wouldn’t be comforted by the idea that there had been any medical advancements in the last 150 years. I’m trying to imagine having to spend an entire workday talking to people who think they all have the swine flu.

I thought this would at least be a good opportunity to lose some weight since it hurts to eat…but really the only thing that feels good is ice cream. So there goes that.

So I realized when my facebook status updates started getting to be three and four paragraphs long that it was probably time to resume blogging again. But I’m facing a bit of an existential crisis.
My brother just moved to Italy for two years…my sister is interviewing for a job at Stanford Med Center…my dad is testifying in DC before subcommittees and other important-sounding people and both my parents are talking about travel to Italy this summer and the purchase of a cabin in Tahoe. And I…I am excited when someone stops going to the bathroom outside like a dog and starts using the potty.
No, no one needs to remind me that this is an important job or that it’s one of the hardest jobs in the world or anything like that. I just need to wallow for a few minutes in my winter doldrums which should be gone by now but have been reignited by a spring storm newscasters are calling the worst of the season. I shall pull myself up and cure my own malaise the same way I usually do — with a reminder of a greater spiritual purpose and a generous dose of chocolate.

Actually, using malaise in a sentence and discovering I spelled it correctly has made me feel better already.