Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-03-27 - 10:24 p.m.

You Just Can't Get Good Help

I'm too tired to go to bed.

Yeah. It's true. It's easier to sit here and type then it is to walk all the way down the hall into my bedroom, unearth the child under my quilts and walk her back to her own bed, spend two minutes in the Virtue of Sonicare, take these clothes off and get in bed. I'm even so tired that SOUNDS like a lot to me, and I left out some stuff, too. Like the kitchen window is open and the door isn't locked and the lights are still on.

I did some hard stuff today. If I told you what it was, not only would you be stupendously bored but you'd wonder what the hell was so hard about THAT? Well, I faced some paper demons, found some stuff, looked at a lot of ...MAIL. You know about me and that M-words: mail and marriage. I don't do either. Looking through my mail reminded me of why I hate my mail, which in turn reminded me that if I would look through my mail every day I might not hate it, which left me feeling like a lame self-defeating circular mail-hater. Yet I plowed on, go ME, and I did what I had to do, never minding the fact that it was only a tenth of what I SHOULD be doing and ten times LATER than I should be doing it and that normal people do these things every DAY and think nothing of it; never mind all that. We're all special in our own ways, aren't we?

It ain't easy, sorting mail with a 700 pound neurotic gorilla on your back.

But anyway I did that, and I did the stuff I have to do every day like going to work and going to the other work and picking up kids and helping with homework and making phone calls and making dinner and washing dishes. Did all that. Didn't do it perfect but did it.

(Yes, but you didn't call your mother, did you?)

No, was I supposed to?

(You're always supposed to call your mother if you didn't, idiot. You didn't call your mother and you didn't go visit your father in his facility and you didn't finish that proofreading and you didn't take the kids to the park and you didn't -)

Hey - shut the fuck up a minute. What's this about? Was any of that on the schedule?

(The schedule? Ha! You talking about that stupid piece of paper which, by the way, you already LOST? THAT schedule? And exactly who made that up? If you had time to make schedules, and call your best friend to chat - I know she wasn't home but you WOULD have chatted, you know you would have - and let me see - you spent time playing at the writer's site, too, didn't you? THAT didn't slop anybody's hogs, now did it? Don't you think you could have made better use of THAT time?)

Everybody needs some down time, you know. It wasn't THAT much. It wasn't like I took a nap or spent two hours drinking coffee. And you know when I talk on the phone I use the cordless so I can wash dishes or fold laundry.

(Yeah, you didn't take a nap TODAY. Don't give me that crap. You take naps. You take plenty of naps. AND you read cheap paperbacks in bed, and you don't visit your father enough.)

So I'm tired. My back hurts. I wasn't digging ditches today, but then again, I was. I dug a few good ones, trenches that ought to allow a little runoff in the future where it's sorely needed. I hope so, because I'm tired of supervising while the laborers bicker and whine.

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