I'm depressed.  I really, really miss my children.  I have to file for another extension on my taxes.  My lawyer has been consistently blowing me off for months.  My money evaporates on contact, and yet I still don't have any pickles in the fridge or C batteries.  All day I fought with Microsoft Word, pleading with it to print out a form without crashing the entire system, while simultaneously dealing with photocopier salespeople who reek with the vibe of swindle.  I have a traffic court date Wednesday and don't know the first thing about it, AND I am not even sure I have enough gas and/or money for gas to get all the way up to Franklin Township anyway.  Goddammit.  Driving my van is torture anyway, on account of the rusty wheels, but in wet weather it's worse, prone to skid, which is why I am in traffic court in the first place.  I hate this.  I've got one friend leaving the net, having recently discovered his addiction, and I've got another friend whose shrink nurse wife thinks he's bent in the head and might use that as a weapon in their disintegrating marriage.  Of course he's a head case - guess who drove him round the bend!  And my damn cat won't get his leg out from in front of the computer screen.

And I have a really nasty case of guilt.

Sorting out all my stuff in the unpacking, I came across a picture of wlofie from when we were in Copenhagen.  He's looking very cute and puppylike.  I feel like a rotten bastard.

And I'm fat.  I hate being fat.  I was fat before, briefly, in between childbirths, but I don't know what made it go away.  My theory is fluctuating hormones following the younger kid's birth.  It's not like I can haul off and get pregnant so I could lose weight after the delivery.  My ass and thighs are increasing at an alarming rate, but my food consumption has gone down.  If it would just stop raining for a few hours, I could do some bike riding.  Or walking.  Or something.

I gave up alcohol about a month ago.  I'm not getting an adequate supply of coffee.  And I gave up smoking.  Again.  If I didn't keep sliding off the wagon, I wouldn't have to keep going through the agony of quitting now would I?  I mean this is actually painful, acutely.  Damn my cocky youthful self, so sure that my easy ability to take it or leave it would be with me forever.

Oh god I am miserable.  My mood swings are so drastic sometimes that it makes my head throb.  And they come too fast.  It's so tiring.  The rages burn me out, even more so for being so tightly contained.  I can't express it at work, so I clamp a lid on it, but the steam feels like it's hissing out the seams.

I hate Microsoft products!  I hate all the goddamned extraneous bullshit programs that come preinstalled and firmly ensconced in the Startup folder on new computers.  I hate Microsoft products, that can't gracefully crash without taking every goddamned other component on the system with them. I feel so impatient and irritable (but always behaving so properly, so very understandingly) with people I am trying to help who know nothing, nothing about computers at all.  Augh!

And I hate the confusion that creeps into my head like the smell of Pine Sol in an unventilated bathroom.  Like having to pee badly, like a shrill hum that makes it so hard to think.  It feels like a lump of ham behind my eyebrows.  I look at this stack of brochures, trying to visualize how they should be arranged for access, and can't think.  All spatial ability gone, all logic and order.  I look at these boxes and nothing comes, and I look at this teenager standing there, trying not to let my expression communicate how helpless I am, how I would love for him to put his young flexible genius mind on it and make it all work out the way it should.  I'm trying to take charge, but I cannot even fully mentally examine the problem.  All I know is that this arrangement will not work.  Nothing else comes.  So I wave it away and confidently stride off.  And cry in my cubicle.