So today is most definitely the worst day I’ve had in the last few years and I’m not sure I can even tell you why.  I don’t even understand why.  It started with my wife, last night, complaining how I hadn’t done her laundry.  It was in a suitcase, in the garage and I didn’t even know it was there.  To her it felt a bit intentional.  To me, it felt like she should shut the fuck up.

Right, so here’s where it gets tricky because I’ve had this internal rule, based on a desire for a stable home life, that I don’t write about my home life that much nor about my wife at all.  It’s not like she’d know because it’s not like she ever reads anything I write.  But if I’m sensational enough I’m certain it would get back to her since most of my readership, about about 95% of people who have ever commented, are friends with her as well.  And 24 hours later, her and I are at peace with one another.  So what’s there to blog about?

Well, let’s review. 

I threw the dog half-way across the yard.  He actually literally shit himself in midair  (I threw a dog from our porch and saw the shit land separately from the dog).  I pulled the indoor door handle off the our truck, I pulled it closed so quickly (in anger).  That’ll cost us hundreds of dollars I’m sure. I destroyed one of our lamps by throwing it on the floor and jumping on it.  Then I took pleasure in bending it into smaller pieces so I could fit it into the trash.  I screamed  (and I mean screamed, beatles and bieber fans had nothing on me) at the top of my lungs at Nathan to shut the fuck up (I had put him in the crib, with a soother, and did not go near him.  I might be a horrible person at times, but at least, today, I knew when I needed to remove myself from my son)

In a typical self-defeating act I chose to eat a bag of potato chips for lunch and a frozen pizza for supper, in direct opposition to my recently adopted eat-no-processed-food mantra.  Because I am nothing if not capable of self-destruction.  Also, somewhere in there I answered a telemarketer purely to scream at him.  In fact, he called back twice.. he hadn’t said anything the first two times because I kept screaming at him.  Somewhere in his first few sentences he asked if I was on some type of prescription medication and admitted he kept calling back because he found me amusing.  This was somewhere around the time I kicked over our couch.  And most shameful of all, I texted the words “we need to talk” to my wife.  I could easily be mistaken, but I don’t think I’ve ever uttered or typed those words before. 

The moral of the story?  For all those people out there who are lucky enough to have a stay at home spouse I have bad news for you.  Something perhaps you’ve suspected all along (and I’ve been on both sides of the arrangement).  Being a stay at home parent is the much much harder job.  Sorry, you lose.  And if you want the laundry done: fucking well do it yourself.  You know damn well where the laundry machine is.

So I’m very likely going to cause myself some more trouble down the road because Janine, despite having been a stay-at-home mom for a year, still feels she was justified in expressing her feelings.  And I very much realize that my various reactions were out of proportion to the cause. You know what?  I am not entirely mentally stable.  I never have been.  I likely never will. 

Seriously.

I have taken on too many projects.  I want to podcast; I want to blog; I want to rearrange our pantry, our kitchen and our entire house to my liking; I want my family members to be perfect automatons that bend their will to mine; I want to suddenly eat organic non-processed, preferably non-meat, meals; I want to convince everyone I know to do the same; I want to write a novel; I want to change the world; I want to switch my phone bill to automatically deduct from my business credit card instead of my personal credit card; I want to finish setting up my media computer; I want to see all my friends constantly; and I really want more alone time.  And I really should begin meditating on a regular basis again.  This list is not nearly exhaustive.

I am pulling myself in too many directions and today I just wanted to curl up into a ball and die, or quit.  As Janine told me (during our hour long conversation prompted by my “we need to talk” text) “Your doing this all in a ‘James’ way, 110% or quit” and it’s true.  I have a problem with the middle way.  Which as a self-confessed Buddhist is a bit ironic.  I am pulling myself in too many directions at once and the attachment to all these things appears to be causing me some deep deep suffering.  But it never feels that way in the moment.  But I suppose it never does.

The last year or two of my writing, I think, has a rather invulnerable feel to it… a natural consequence of spending 10-30 hours on a single post.  I mean, I’ve been choosing topics that I am passionate about and then spend a lot of time on it.  So, yah, I probably read a hell of a lot more about battlestar galactica than you did. But I regret that somewhere along the line I lost the vibe I had during my much older writing, to fearlessly confront the human condition as represented by me.

I am so flawed that sometimes I am amazed that I make it through the day intact.  By the end of today I was calmly reading a book to my son and a girl I was babysitting and asking them both questions like “who can find the sheep?”.  That happened today too.  Perhaps you’re wondering how exactly all of this transpired?  A chronological order giving cause and effect to this very strange day?  But I will deny you that, mainly because I don’t want to relive today in that manner.  I kinda want this day to be over, you dig? The highlights made a good hook, and it all really happened.

Baby steps, I suppose.  Be the change you want to see in the world, but one step at a time.

Baking my own bread.  That I can do.  I can keep baking my own bread.

And one of these days, I’m going to make my own peanut butter.  And crackers.  Since reading the ingredients on whole-wheat-crackers I don’t ever want to eat them again.  Tomorrow I’ll likely be eating a bunch of non-organic non-free-range meat with a bunch of pesticide produced produce.

But I’ll be eating home made bread.

Baby steps.