Sensory Overload

I have had a hard week. Ever since my snow tubing incident, my teeth on one side are killing me. The problem is, the x-rays look fine. My teeth look fine. But I have been popping percocet for a week now (three cheers for narcotics!!), and the pain is only getting worse. Ahhh. My dentist told me on Monday to drug up and tough it out for five days or so, see if things settle down. Of course, five days is Friday and he's out of the office, haha. Could be a clever ruse to get me off his back.

Anyway, pain in your head has got to be the worst. It's like a dull roar laying behind every thought. It started with pain from cold stuff, then cold stuff with chewing, now hot stuff, too. At least I can say the pain is isolating: on Monday, it was all four of my back teeth (two up/two down). Now I pretty much have figured out which tooth it is. Maybe. It's a very non-specific pain.

With very specific impacts on my mindset. I am grumpy. I have sworn off facebook today, I even deleted the app from my phone this morning. After I write this tome, I'm going to put my little head down and stay away from the internet. I may even...GASP...power down my phone.

It was a crap week: Blake, my 11yo, is doing miserably in 6th grade. I spent the week talking to counselors and teachers and alternately wrapping my hands around Blake's throat and giving him big hugs. Kill him with kindness, or just kill him?? Today is the last day of the quarter. I told him I think one of our main problems is that he is not afraid to bring home miserable grades. I have elaborated on the many reasons he has to be afraid of bringing home miserable grades, and I started by showing him a wooden spoon. There will be no Ds or Fs on that report card, or he will become familiar with it as I was when I was a kid. Not that I ever brought home less than a B*, haha, my bad behavior tended toward the mouthiness and defiance. Shocker.

(*I did get a D in tennis at community college, but by then I was too old to spank with a wooden spoon.)

I should say that when he turns in his work, he gets solid As and Bs. But he turns in probably only a third of his work. This is my boy, that in first grade when they started assigning homework, he looked at me in horror and anger and said, "BUT I ALREADY WENT TO SCHOOL TODAY." And that attitude stuck. :) My 7yo, Reid, when I was doing alphabet flash cards when he was four, looked me in the eye with dead seriousness and said, "Look. I. Don't. Care." Ah, that attitude has stuck, too.

Stinky boys. Sabrina, who is a mom to three boys, and I were laughing (weakly, but still laughing) yesterday about how parenting them is getting to watch men being made. They never change. And they'll grow up and get married and their wives will hate us mothers for making them such jerks and the mothers will be standing around saying, "Whatever. Don't blame me. I hope you have boys, too. You'll see."

I complain, but I love them. But this week, I am on B-O-Y-O-V-E-R-L-O-A-D.

Last night, I had plans with a friend. She bailed via text at 5:00 a.m., saying she needed to stay home sick, and I'll admit, I was delighted. I didn't really want to go. It's been a hard week and I just wanted to sit quietly all by myself. I didn't tell Mr. W. that my plans had changed, because I knew he be ON IT, offering to change his own plans to be with me. Shhh.

I went to the library. I left my f'ing phone in the car and I went to the library and I sat and read a book. Quietly, all to myself. I think I'm going to throw my phone away. It has become a giant weighted stone around my neck this week. Alli coerced me into throwing a slumber party tomorrow night - UGH UGH UGH. Every time that little sucker beeps, flashes or vibrates this week, it is like a nail into my brain.

Late last night, I unleashed a bit on Mr. W., who had been playing with his new iPad, sending face time requests - foolishly thinking that I was not receiving them because I was not accepting them - I believe on the day he got it (his out of state and country mom and brother also got one while visiting him last week to stay in touch via facetime) I said, "I will not facetime." This declaration seems to have not been heard or, if heard, not understood to be the definitive declaration that it was. I will reiterate it later with greater clarity. :)

Anyway. So I had told him that evening that my plans had changed and I enjoyed a quiet evening alone, to which, he of course, responded, "Bummer! I would have happily changed my plans to hang out with you."

Yes. I know.

And my lovebug daughter has already chipperly told me she'll be home tomorrow (a "kid-free" weekend) with her seven noisy girlfriends, and she's also spending her whole birthday weekend at home in two weeks (another "kid-free" weekend), and Mr. W. has mapped out a challenging bike training schedule that books every free minute of my time for every weekend from now to September, and biking is FUN and I am trying to REMEMBER that when I look at this very elaborate Excel spreadsheet that screams "YOU WILL KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING EVERY MINUTE OF THE NEXT SIX MONTHS!" And Alli wants to do an organized 5K a month and the March one is only $45/person to enter, and the RSVP bike ride in August is only $100+ but I have to register now and lacrosse for both boys starts soon and I just bought a $150 lacrosse helmet (ARE YOU KIDDING ME??). And no schedules at this point really mean anything, because did I mention I'll have two boys in lacrosse? Well, they'll have games every weekend, too, but who knows when or where. Put that on a spreadsheet, why don't you? And Alli just texted to remind me not to forget to walk down to the fortune cookie factory today and buy the garbage bag size of "unfortune cookies" (flawed, flat factory rejects) that we have stupidly made famous at her birthday parties the last six years. And NOW who gets to carry that home on the bus tonight??

Deep breaths. Calm blue ocean. Everybody wants a piece of me. It is good to be loved. Claustrophobic, but good. Really, really claustrophobic. More claustrophobic than good, this week.

But the thing of it is, the only thing that has changed is that my teeth hurt. Life is life, and this week has been no different, really. And so, I will just pop another percocet (Mommy's happy pills) and turn on Mommy's happy light. Here's what I texted Kim from bed this morning:

Sunshine in a box!

Sunshine in a bottle!
(Crap, I had to go to facebook to grab this picture, but it really was relevant.) 

See, I'm all claustrophobic, but I'm still texting pictures to Kim. Mr. W. told me at some point recently that I'm his best friend. "Kim's my best friend," I said. Kim and I were laughing about this, and decided it is because she lives out of state and is inaccessible, and frequently turns me down when I want to talk to her. Take a lesson, Mr. W. When Kim and I were talking about my plans with Mr. W. for the weekend, I said we were going out Wednesday and probably Friday nights. Bike rides on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Kim said maybe he'd turn me down for Friday night, being busy with his own plans and then I'd be all turned on. "That would be soooo hot," I said. "But it will never happen." Didn't, of course.

But my problem isn't Mr. W. It's these frickin sore teeth, it's two solid weeks of fog, and a distinct vitamin D deficiency. But my mommy loaned me her HappyLite, and percocet dulls the pain, and today is Friday *and* payday and all is well in my world. Or it will be. :)

(Note: the author has a documented case of Seasonal Affected Disorder and lives in Seattle. It is January, and the weather is bleak and miserable. Which is not bad, it's the fact that the weather will remain like this until late June that hurts her so much. The author knows she must one day move to another climate to save her sanity, but at this time, a steady job with a great pension plan and a divorce decree dictating what school district, let alone what state, she must live in, preclude any weather-based improvement to her mental well-being. "Oh well," she thinks, "my youngest is already seven, surely the next eleven years of this will fly by." )