Comment: Virustown

Not much on the docket this weekend. (Is that how spell docket? What's the origin of that word? I'll have to look that up, unless my friend and fellow blogger, The Solipsist, beats me to it.)

We've got about three different viruses brewing in our house at the moment, including that age-old favorite, pink-eye! Nothing like looking at a crusty and pink eye to make your own start itching like mad. Along with itchy eyes, we have a little fever, a little sluggishness, an urge to sleep, and a couple of headaches spread out over three out of four of us. Tis the season!

This is one of the challenges of both having children, and in working with even smaller children. So many hugs; so many germs.

So goodnight from Petri Dish Central.

Complaint: Damn You, Dress-Down Days!

Okay, so my kids attend a school where there is a dress code. The uniform is simple, and keeps the kids from comparing labels all day, I suppose. The best part is, a uniform cuts down on Daily Dressing Drama.

Are you familiar with this? If you have small children, you are. Actually, if you have children, you are. Actually everybody, really, knows this, from spending time watching a spouse or partner or sibling trash their room trying to find the "right" outfit for the occasion.

So we're really happy with uniforms for our kids. And my son is to the point where he even wears his uniform on the weekends. It's chinos and a polo shirt, it's comfortable, and he appears to be comforted on some level by the predictability and familiarity of said outfit, day after day.

But today there was a "Dress-Down Day". Most kids LOVE this. They can wear whatever they want. Today's theme (yes, there was one) was Denim. (FFS)

My son doesn't wear denim. Really. He has one pair of jeans that languish in his drawer because his mother thinks one day he may wear them after all, even though he hasn't worn jeans since the kind that snaps all they way around the inseam, the better to access a diaper. (Baby jeans are seriously adorable.) And come to think of it, my daughter doesn't even own any jeans. She wears dresses. And skirts. And skorts. And jumpers. And gowns.

So this morning sucked for two reasons: 1. My daughter couldn't DECIDE what to wear. 2. My son couldn't handle the fact that he could wear something different, even though he didn't want to wear it, but he kind of did, because he didn't want to stand out, and yet he didn't want to do what everybody else does. So he sat in front of his dresser for 20 minutes, literally paralyzed by indecision. The poor guy. He just doesn't cope with change of routine very well.

So his dad had to calm him down, and I had to invent the perfect outfit for my daughter, invoking the goddess of outfits to assist me in picking the right one for the day. It worked.

So I just don't like Dress-Down Days. They upset the children. And they're way too much work.

Do you think I should complain to the principal? Perhaps I'll send him a link to this post.

Complaint: More Pseudo-Literary Musing

Still smarting from that Glee episode.

And still in the throes of hormonal imbalance. I thought I was over it, but I found myself yelling at my bacon today. So, guess not.

A little book review: Douglas Coupland, all around cool author, coiner of the term (and writer of the novel) "Generation X", has a new book out called "Generation A."

Naturally, when I saw this in the library, I grabbed it. He's quirky, he's zeitgeisty, and he's Canadian, to boot. What's not to love?

It started out looking moderately interesting: five different hipster young adults in a dystopian, undefined future where bees are extinct and pollination is done by hand, get stung by, simultaneously, by bees. This causes the five protagonists to be whisked away to various places where they are probed and quizzed and drugged, in order to find out the essence, the intangible why, as to they in particular among all others in the world, were stung.

Of course I was reminded of "Super Sad True Love Story", which I mentioned awhile back (I'm too lazy to look up the date. C'mon, I'm GenX.), which was also a novel about disaffected hipsters within a dystopian future. Guess I've got a theme going.

Anyway, Coupland's book chugged along in his inimitable way, but then he had his characters all start telling stories. So he's got stories within the story, and they're violent and, for lack of a better word, dumb. To quote the southern belle who briefly dates Jerry on Seinfeld, "It's all just so much fluff."

It really feels like Coupland needed an excuse to tell these random and bizarre stories, so he plunked them into what seemed a promising sense of a plot. And they just go on. And on.

Frankly, I just got sick of reading these stories. And when I looked ahead in the book, they went on until very, very close to the end of the book.

It's disappointing when a book you really like just falls apart, and you can't even make yourself finish it.

Sorry, Doug; I liked it at first, and I wanted to love it, but I couldn't finish it.

As a typical fellow GenXer, I just couldn't be bothered.

Complaint: A Warning to my Female Readers of a Certain Age

Please Note:

Do NOT watch this week's episode of Glee if you are in the throes of premenstruality.

Unless you have lots of kleenex. Those sentimental bastards.

Now I have to go cheer up by watching What the Buck?! on YouTube.

Complaint: Medusa was Grossly Misunderstood.

You know you're in the grip of extreme PMS when you see conspiracy theories at every turn.

This is where my mood has turned.

Funny thing is, I've had a kick-ass great day. I had coffee with one of my favorite people, went to a an informational interview that got me a job and connected me with a kindred spirit, and I still wasn't late for pick-up at my kids' school.

This was a vast improvement on yesterday, when I gently, ever-so-gently, rear-ended the mom in the Odyssey in front of me at the car line pick-up at school. After apologizing profusely, I went back to my car and sobbed silently. I should have known this was the beginning of hormonal hell.

Anyway, I think you feel the highs and lows even more acutely when you're in this heightened biological state. I had such GREAT day today, and then my daughter was totally in my son's grill while he was trying to do his homework and I finally sent her to her room where she howled for an eternity, it seemed. That kind of soured me. And I just got in the grouch zone big time.

And I noticed that I was more than a little pissed at the woman whose car I bumped because she called her insurance company.

Honestly, that's it.

Of course she called her insurance company. If it was me, I would have done the same.

I guess I would have liked to have talked more to her first, but what, really, would that have achieved?

When you see it in print, it doesn't look like a big deal. She made a phone call. Then I got a phone call. And it will all work out, hopefully without too painful a bump in our premium. End of story. So I needed to drop that storyline, pronto.

Then my husband came downstairs from his office to say he was missing dinner tonight and I totally over-reacted, as if he'd said he was going away for six months on a cruise without me.

This is PMS at its rich, delightful, best.

So I think I'm going to have to really Zen it up and pause before I speak for the next five or six days. And remember that the world is not out to get me. I'm pretty good at that all by myself.

And now, I will go and celebrate the good parts of this day. Which were many.

And Medusa? PMS. Duh. And a bad hair day, but that's another story.

Comment: A Cold Mess

Winter is upon us, and with it, the chills. Not just from viruses, though we know that's coming down the pike. But just plain CHILLS from being outside.

I took a walk today sans gloves (it is, after all, only early October) and I froze my fingers off! Seriously, I feel that sentence merits an exclamation mark. That's how I feel about it, Jake Jarmel be damned!

It took me close to an hour to stop shivering. And I think we're also entering the season when it doesn't matter how your hair looks, because your head will be buried under some form of hat for the next six months, minimum. God, I miss California.

Actually, what I'm really thinking about today is a meditation class I have tonight. It's the first session, and my first ever such class. Ironically, and natch, I am nervous as a bed bug in a four star hotel.

I've been angsting all day about how it will be, who will be there, if I'll be the lamest person there, etc. Crisis of confidence? You betcha.

It seems that I can hum along fine for a period of time, but then I notice that underneath it all, like everyone else, I'm a quivering mass of insecurities. Not very attractive, but there it is.

Anyway, I was reassured today when I spoke to the director of the yoga center where the class is taking place. She said all the right things and talked me off the ledge, because I was SO ready to bail on the whole thing and get into bed and watch 30Rock on Hulu tonight instead.

These yoga people, they're so...calm. And nice. And...friendly.

Makes me feel like I might get something out of this class.

So I'm gearing up for: Neurotic meditation! Uncomfortable positions on random cushions! A sincere desire to not fall on my face! Hope for the human race!

All this, and more, in tomorrow's QCC.

Complaint: Not a Good Idea

As a treat for our brains (and a break on the wallet), my husband has subscribed to The New York Times, weekends only.

This means that Friday we get a scrawny paper, Saturday we get a slim paper, and Sunday, we get a honking enormous paper replete with flyers and little glossy magazines full of 500$ shoes and 50$ edgy cocktail napkins. (Some of the pictures are really pretty. Also, there's a whole section encouraging me to patronize Amazon and get the latest tome by the latest young literary genius.)

But today, it didn't come. It felt a bit Waiting for Godot-ish. Is it here now? Have you seen it yet? How about now? My husband even called the company, but to no avail. They said they'd send it, but they didn't. Very Becketian. (Becketish? Becketarian?)

Anyway, I was forced to hightail it to technology in order to obtain my news, in spite of the fact that I really prefer my news on paper. It seems more real, and it stays in my brain longer.

So as I went to the front page online today, the first thing I saw was about more states allowing concealed guns into bars and restaurants. Take a minute to scan the article, I'll wait.

Okay, What the WHAT?!

How is mixing alcohol and artillery even remotely a sane idea?

Sure, they say the gun-toters have to drink soda, but do you really think that's going to be verified on a regular basis? Will there be breathalyzers at each table next to the mini-jukeboxes?

And what about the waitstaff, who are slogging away for crap pay while in the line of fire of some tipsy, reactionary, paranoid gun-toter who's pissed off at the slow service or lack of maraschino cherries in his daughter's Shirley Temple?

That is, for lack of a more artful term, completely fucked up.

This is yet another reason that this country is in rapid and inexorable decline.

The other reason (though arguably somewhat less dangerous) of late is that double-chicken-double-cheese-double-bacon-no-bun atrocity at Burger King. This artery-clogger is probably even going to fool some ignorant folks into thinking it's healthy because it's all Atkinsy, what with no overt carbs. Good grief.

I'm afraid Gary Shteyngart might be right. About everything.