Is it a standing coma or just a cold?
Children are plague carriers. Mine gave me her wretched cold. But on the plus side I just got to type ‘wretched,’ so that’s good. I think I have mucous behind my eyes.
Colds don’t completely knock you out but they do limit your brain power and as I have shit to do, this is an inconvenience. I’ve got lists. Or I would have made lists if my brain was working. I have to make lists for the lists I have to make. My multi-tasking skills aren’t at their best. In the Red corner we have: vampire rock opera with all its attending jobs: production, fundraising, casting, audition venue acquisition, music transposition and housing for artists. In the Green corner we have Peter Pan with all its attending jobs: production, fundraising, casting, scheduling, set design, personnel juggling. (Ladies start your angina!) At the same time? I’m doing this at the SAME time? For a smart gal, I can be really dumb. When David sees the whites of my eyes his go-to is: “Chocolate Martini?”
Things are slipping through the cracks. Like last week we had no bread. Or cheese. Well, we had cheese slices, but the child won’t eat cheese slices, she only likes real cheese, so for all intents and purposes, we had no cheese. Or yogurt. The little ones that fit in her lunch. With the real ingredients – like cream and sugar and no aspartame. I’d been doing so well. I was making pumpkin ginger muffins for lunches. I would put them into freezer bags. I was organized. Then it all went to hell. And now she has Nutrigrain bars for her lunch. Which taste a bit “sawdusty” to quote said child.
How do families with two working parents manage? Who cleans the house? We have dust rhinoceroses. They’re freaking massive! I keep noticing things that I need to do, like paint the baseboards in the kitchen in the corner where the dishwasher is. And wash the basement floors. And sew those slipcovers for the dining room chairs that have been cut out for 2 years now, and strip the paint off the trunk that my friend Nathalie is convinced has “dove-tailed joints!” Is there an alternate universe where all my baseboards are clean?? I just want to see it once. Just once. Then I could die… and I would be content. “Just look at them. Look at those beautiful clean baseboards!”
As I lay upon the sofa today, I made David promise that if I were to suddenly die he would use my passing to capitalize on all my artistic endeavours. The rock opera would make it to Broadway, my children’s books distributed through Scholastic, my screenplays made into multi-million dollar films. “Have no shame,” I told him. “Show pictures of my dead body and Rissa weeping over me.”
‘Course that could have been the cold talking.