Oprah Has Her Aha! Moments...

...and I have my Oh fuck! moments.

Don't get me wrong, Gentle Reader. I have my Aha! moments--but sorry to break it to ya, O, but most folks with a modicum of education call them epiphanies because we know that word isn't all about magi and frankincense and myrrh. In fact, I've enjoyed a number of epiphanies in my day, and I really do enjoy having that sudden, astounding revelation that sets things to right.

But I also have my Oh fuck! moments--and I'm sure you can determine for yourself, Gentle Reader, that these moments set nothing to right. No, they inspire a cold sweat, a tingling dread, a bowel-twisting nausea, an overwhelming urge to crawl under the bed and hide or just fall on your ass and bawl.

Guess which of those I did this morning when I had my latest Oh fuck! moment?


Crying Is Not the Solution
But that's what I instinctively wanted to do at 3:30 this morning when I was lying in bed, wide awake thanks to the shooting pain in my right arm (long story) and realized that, oh fuck, the past two weeks of having the boy home and trying to maintain some semblance of my "normal" routine is just a preview of what summer's going to be like. Cramming into two hours what I normally do in about two hours and fifteen minutes at the gym just so I can get the boy out of the kids' care center in time. Trying to arrange errands for when he's freshly rested and fed so he's more cooperative. (I can't believe I still have to do this with him. For the FSM's sake, he's almost 6 years old, not 2! He's supposed to have outgrown this, right?) Not having a moment to myself in my own house without Babbling Brook yammering on about Star Wars or his friends or this or that or some other inanity that I'm sure is meant to drive me out of my f'in mind.

Umm, yeah, so perhaps you can understand, Gentle Reader, what an impact this morning's Oh fuck! moment had on me.

And y'know what's scarier? These past two weeks I've been largely off-duty: no summaries to edit, no feature articles to write and post and only a few PRs to code up and post. How the hell am I going to cope--er, manage when I am going to be working? I mean, I can't just spend the summer not earning money somehow. I can't spend it bopping around the Internet and knitting. The FSM knows my right arm's going to fall off if I keep subjecting it to the muscular tension of lifting weights (too quickly, lest I go over my two-hour time limit to have the boy in the kids' care center), kickboxing (yer supposed to make a fist!), running (too quickly because, again, I don't want to go over my two-hour time limit) and knitting.

Okay okay, gotta back off. Some nerve in my left shoulder is twanging like a plucked harp string as I've started writing this.

Have I mentioned, Gentle Reader, that I've been a bit...stressed these past two weeks? That my face looks like one of those really awful "Before" pictures during the Proactiv infomercials? That I'm either stuffing my face or worried about stuffing my face and getting fat?

But I'm not going to cry. I'm not. I won't. Because that won't solve anything--except maybe give me a good catharsis, which I really need right about now because I'm not getting my catharsis from running because I don't have the luxury of time to have a catharsis while running because I'm too focused on getting in my 8 or 9 miles in 70 minutes or less. To paraphrase Short Round, "No time for catharsis, Dr. Jones!"

So just give me a little while, Gentle Reader. I'll have an epiphany about this situation at some point. I mean, I can always rejigger my workout schedule so perhaps I lift weights in the morning and go back to run once the husband gets home (which cuts into my supper prep time). I can...ship the boy off to one set of grandparents for June, to the other set for July and then have him home and get him back on some kind of school-ready schedule during August. I could...leave him at home--and face child endangerment charges! Yeah, that's the way to go.

Oh fuck. I just realized that there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to Spin downtown with the world's greatest Spin instructor this summer.

Damn. Two Oh fuck! moments in one day--and it's not even 7 a.m. Oh fuck.