• Today wasn’t horrible! Clara Jane, while not thrilled about going to daycare, hasn’t went into uncontrollable hysteria upon drop-off. Today, when I picked her up, she was actually having fun. There’s hope for us yet!
• I was punished for my running away from home by developing a layer of horrible green anger on the inside of my lungs. It’s been gradually escaping ever since.
• There’s been knitting. I finished the loudest socks I’ve ever made, and some gloves for Courtney. Now I’m going to try to finish a sweater for Clara Jane while it’s cold enough to wear it while it fits her. She’ll really be cranky if I keep dragging my feet and she has to wear it in July.
• Did you know there’s a way-cool craft show in St. Louis this Saturday? My diseased lungs and I will be attending.  We’re going with Robin v2.0. I’ll be in search of birthday gifts for Clara Jane. Amid all the whining and crying and tantrums I sort of lost track that her birthday’s in two weeks.
• Yesterday I prepared enough food to feed my family for eight meals. I put all this food in the freezer. Last night we ordered Chinese. Tonight, pizza. Brian and I can’t bear to actually use any of that food that’s so beautifully filling our deep freezer. What’s the fun of making homemade frozen food if there isn’t a little freezer burn involved?
• Speaking of which, there’s pizza.

Hi. I bailed.

It was necessary. Three years ago when I was undergoing some rather intensive therapy for panic attacks, anxiety disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and agoraphobia, my therapist came up with something that has truly been a life-saver. She recognized what a shitty job I do when I have to deal with stress, and that sometimes the best thing to do is get removed from the situation. Every now and then that means really removing myself, preferably to a hotel for an evening, which is much cheaper and easier than being committed to The Bin, although I understand that the room service in the latter is cheaper but not as tasty. The hotel also has the perk of being much more comfortable, what with the new-fangled super-comfy beds and comforters and enough pillows to construct Pillow Fort Knox and the lack of ankle shackles.

It’s always in January when I need to run away from home for a night. It’s never planned in advanced. It happens when a day is going so poorly, after so many other days that have gone poorly, that I find myself on the Priceline website, offering $40 to the spiffiest taker who’ll allow me to show up within a few hours. In this case, I showed up at 3:00 check-in time and didn’t leave the room until today’s noon check-out, except for a brief trip to the drug store for candy and Chipotle for a carry-out burrito, chips and guacamole.

My ass barely left the bed. I watched horrible TV and DVDs, I knitted, I caught up on some email,  I read, and I slept. Pure, wonderful, quiet bliss.

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Sorry. Forgot about y’all for a few days.

Well, not really, but I can’t say I’ve been agonizing about blog fodder. Too busy dealing with The Terror That Comes Before Four. It continues, my friends, and it’s raining hard.

Do you know how hard it is to plan a birthday party for someone who is continually hitting you? Not easy.

Tuesday was a bit better on the daycare drop-off front. The real hysterics came after she came home. Much later. In the middle of the night. On top of everything, Clara Jane’s got a cold, so she spent Tuesday night/Wednesday morning hacking and sobbing for us to not leave her. Considering her condition and lack of sleep, I thought it best to keep her home on Wednesday, which means next Tuesday is really going to suck.

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Doing mostly nothing, really.

Saturday it was too cold to be alive, and my nerves were far too shot after spending the week with Anger Baby to come up with some form of house-bound family fun. Instead, I banished Brian and Clara Jane to the main floor of the house while I overtook the rumpus room. I alternated between knitting and cleaning. Major cleaning. We’ve lived here for seven months, which means that we’ve realized that every single thing we brought into this house is in the wrong place. I gutted closets and even unpacked some of the boxes. Most of the stuff I unpacked went straight into a box for Salvation Army because honestly, if I haven’t used it in seven months I probably don’t need it. Productive. That’s me.

Sunday. Okay, Sunday was fun. My little family and the OtherRobin’s little family went out to get some beer for breakfast. How awesome is it that our local brew pub has brunch? There’s something so wonderful about having a cup of coffee and an oatmeal stout in the same meal. Unfortunately, they were out of the coffee stout, which would have been much more efficient.

As a perk, brunch was a benefit for Fair Shares, the new local  combined community supported agricultural program. Both of our families are joining, and if you’re in the St. Louis area, you should join, too. It’s going to rock. Seriously. Lots of food from local farmers and producers, delivered, for cheap. Plus you get to give the finger to The Man (in this case, corporate farms). It’s physically healthy, environmentally healthy, economically healthy, and it’s going to be yummy. No, they’re not paying me to pimp for them. I just love the idea behind this – supporting local agriculture and making local, healthy food available to everyone – not just people with loads of money. If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that keeping people fed and healthy is my pet cause, one that I think should be a top priority. If people aren’t fed well, they’re not going to be able to do much of anything. Fair Shares will give you the opportunity to feed yourself and your family well. It’ll help small farmers make more money, thus helping them keep food on their own tables. And Fair Shares donates food and memberships to low-income folks who would otherwise have problems getting good, healthy food. Everyone wins!

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Things were better today. They didn’t start out better; the day started with Clara Jane crawling into bed with me this morning and then acting like a demon, as she has done every single day for a week. Thank God our dear friend OtherRobin invited Clara Jane and me to come over this afternoon. We ate catfish. We knitted. We drank coffee. We ran a steady stream of kid movies on 54″ flat-screen sanity-saver. Clara Jane and Gryffin took their frustrations out on each other instead of us, a much-needed reprieve. So I’m feeling a bit better.

Since I’ve done nothing but bad-mouth my child this week, I’ll share with you a funny story, just to show that we haven’t gone 100% Gulag around here. This probably illustrates why my child is being difficult, and how it’s my fault. Or, as Brian told me, “You’re going to Hell for this one, Rob.”

Brian and I have barely spoken this week, mainly because I’ve been incapable of coherent speech by the time he gets home. Had things not been crazy, we wouldn’t have had this conversation a few minutes ago:

Brian – Clara Jane told me the weirdest thing last night. She said she needs to get a butterfly net to catch butterflies and …. loony people.

Mother of the Year – Crazy people. She needs a butterfly net to catch butterflies and crazy people.

Brian – sounds of struggling to breathe because holy shit, he has to live with these people.

I’m sure you’re wondering how my child decided she needs a butterfly net to catch butterflies and crazy people, aren’t you. On Thursday, after storytime and before The Clara Jane Tsunami blew ashore, we were having lunch when she told me, “Mom, I need a butterfly net.”

Me – Why?

Clara Jane – To catch stuff.

Me – Like … butterflies and crazy people?

Clara Jane – Yep. Butterflies and crazy people.

Once Brian regained control of his respiratory system, he informed me I was going to Hell for dooming our child to a life of mental illness sensitivity training courses. “Brian, have you met me? That poor child lives with crazy every single day. She needs that net to keep me corralled.”

Not that it takes much to catch me. I’m not capable of doing much more than shuffling away before The Voices take over.

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That’s all I really want. Just one day that I can enjoy with Clara Jane without dealing with a massive, screaming hissy-fit tantrum.

I’d really like to know where my sweet, mellow, easy-going kid went. I’m at a loss.

Today started great. Thursday storytime, followed by lunch. But then we went to a craft store and all hell broke loose. I gave her numerous chances to follow directions, which she didn’t. So I put her in the cart, which was greeted with much slapping and hitting. Got home, insisted on a nap, which was met with more hitting and hair-pulling.

Hair-pulling! What the motherfuck is going on?

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I’ve had lots of people inform me that when a child turns four, it’s like a switch gets flipped and they suddenly turn into somewhat reasonable human beings.

Clara Jane will turn four one month from today. Thirty-two days. In a little less than two hours, it’ll be thirty-one days. Four weeks, three days. 746 hours.

Do you sense my anticipation and glee regarding this blessed event? However, if she turns four and those changes everyone speaks of don’t happen, I’m letting them babysit her as punishment for raising my hopes.

A friend on a message board made the comment today that her knee-biters were in Sassytown today. If that’s the case, then we visited Tantrumville with a pit stop in Really Really Really Fucking Cranky Hollow.

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Like I said on Friday, Saturday was going to be an interesting day. Interesting. Gut-wrenching. Sometimes there isn’t a difference between the two.

Earlier this week I learned that Natalie, a woman I had gotten to know on a Wilco message board and Ravelry, had passed away on January 3rd. She was 35, just a few weeks older than me, and her passing was quite a shock to everyone. Her screen name on the Wilco board was Ste. Genevieve, from the Son Volt song, Tear-Stained Eye. Since the song is about Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, which is only an hour south of St. Louis, our mutual friend Kate (who wrote a wonderful eulogy for Nat.) and I decided to do a little ceremony on Natalie’s behalf. A bunch of our Wilco board friends sent messages, tinfoil sculptures, flowers, and candles, and we made plans to make an alter for Nat on the banks of the Mississippi River in Ste. Genevieve at dusk on Saturday.

Pretty heavy stuff, indeed.

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While I enjoy the challenge of trying to blog every single day during November and December, I’ve gotta admit that January is a relief. So little happening, and no pressure to make nothing into something worth writing about. I’m a firm believer that the best way to improve ones writing is to write. That said, I feel a little like I’ve overdone it. Sort of like over-exercising – do too much and you’ll find yourself sidelined. Now that I’m not churning out a blog entry a day and trying to find interesting ways to write about my shoes, I’m actually thinking about dusting off that manuscript I haven’t touched in over a year, and maybe starting another.

This could very well be a post with dots, but I refuse to use so many dots in a week. You don’t mind disjointed sentences, do you?

Clara Jane hasn’t flipped anyone off lately. She had started doing inappropriate dancing and bullying.  This time four years ago, I was hugely knocked up. Every night I would be slammed awake with gastric juices trying to exit my body at 4 AM on the dot. When this happened I’d move to the couch and half-sleep sitting up, flipping between the various music video channels. “Hey Ya” was one of the videos I saw roughly 924,924 times in the last three months of my pregnancy, and I’m glad it’s the song that has stuck with my kid since she moved out of my womb. She requires it five times a day, at least. Could be worse; could be I Believe in a Thing Called Love  or Toxic, which I also saw roughly 924,924 times in those three months. Perhaps this means that good taste is born, not created.

Tomorrow will be interesting.

I didn’t shuffle last week because I was too lazy to go upstairs and get my iPod. I’m still too lazy, but I’ve finally moved a good portion of my music from my old computer to my MacBook, which will be providing the shuffle for us.

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