Jinx!

It was a rough weekend here at the ol' Bosche stead.

I earned every bit of it, every whine, every tear, every fit whether mine or that of one or the other of my offspring. Because my last post was just too life-is-grand to sustain itself.

It was brutally hot, both inside and out, and we never did get the rain I'd been counting on. I worked too much and drank too little. Alex regressed to the age of three, crying over everything that went even microscopically askew for no explicable reason.

Katherine, dear, sweet baby Katherine ... well, she just about did me in with her refusal to sleep and the resulting caustic crankiness. She wouldn't eat and five minutes later would scream for food like she was being torn limb from limb by a hungry mountain lion. She spat up so much we ran through most of the clean clothes in her drawer. And that's a LOT of clothes (thanks be to LJ!). No matter how we held her, swaddled, unswaddled, tummy to tummy, back to tummy, up high, down low, at an angle ... she squirmed and "ernnnngh"ed until you put her down. Whereupon she would scream.

White noise, fail.

Car rides, fail.

Alex making funny faces, double fail, as the failure hurt HIS suddenly extraordinarily delicate feelings and sent him into a funk from which he didn't emerge for hours.

Gas drops, Zantac, burping, bouncing, swinging, swaying, rocking, being still.

NOTHING WOULD WORK.

Thank GOD she slept through the night last night or I think I might have gone off the deep end. Which isn't saying much, as I usually tread water in that space in the pool that's right next to the rope line with the little buoys.

I got out of the house all of three times, and one was to get the mail and find no lottery checks awaiting me. Just a birthday invitation for some kid who called Alex a loser. (It was in the frame of preferred football teams, which really means this kid's DAD is to blame, so I won't hold it against him too hard. Though we are going to the state fair next weekend instead of to his party.)

One of my on-the-side articles got flagged for plagiarism, which set off every single defense mechanism I own all at once, at full blast. I would NEVER. It was cleared quickly, and it helped some that it was flagged by a computerized plagiarism checker, not a person, and only because I used a tiny phrase from a governmental document because I was scared to change the wording too much for fear of making it wrong and getting carted off to jail.

I don't know, I'm tired!

My birthday present to myself didn't work so we had to take it back.

My throat was and is on fire, and I'm hoping it's ragweed because if I'm getting sick I'll take a cue from Katherine and scream my displeasure to the stars.

...Otherwise, life is grand!

Small potatoes, I realize, and a minute price to pay for all that I do have and all that goes right more often than I have any right to expect.

But still. Next time I go off on a Pollyanna tangent, muzzle me.

***

Upon re-reading, I realize I used "defense mechanism" wrong. But it's really less of an error on my part than a compliment to anyone who's reading. My friends and family are smart. Y'all know what I meant.