@#$%!$%%

&^%$$&*Phone system…the call in phone system at school was changed. I spent an hour last night searching my house for my @#$%$#@ PIN number and trying to find the one page on the website that explained how to call in for a @#$%$## sub because, dammit, I felt like crap and I had to enroll the cave troll in Kindergarten and I was taking the @#$$# day off. I actually had to SOB before I could get Mate to take seriously the level of stress about this matter–but it worked. One sob and he magically reached into some bizarre corner I had overlooked and found the phone. Bless his @#$$%#@@%&* heart.

@#%%## School System… Chicken and I hauled the two short people in to the local District Office to sign the Cave Troll up for one school and Chicken up for another, and as it turned out, we were not only two pieces of paperwork short for the Cave Troll (the garbage bill wouldn’t do, apparently, it HAD to be the electricity bill. WTF? Are we going to pay for trash pickup in a house we don’t pay for power? If we hadn’t been completely unable to dredge up the government sanctioned proof that there was a real Cave Troll who really lived in our house with apparently no power but no garbage either, I might have pitched a typhoon-class tizzy about that one.) But then, after I get them both signed up to go to anywhere but our home schools (the district allows for open registration) I was told that, apparently, I now had to sign Cave Troll up for his home school as well. Why? Is it not enough that we want to get him the hell out there? (Chicken went there for a year. She got behind in math, because her entire math class sucked so very very badly that the teacher kept sending her and one other girl out to the computer lab for math tutorials because that was the only way someone was going to learn something. Damn. I wish MY school would let me do that. One of my most pain-in-the-ass students told me that the counselor wouldn’t move him to my 6th period class this year, because, in her words, ‘She’d rather die than sit through that class’. Nice.) Anyway, my day off was over–it’s Mate’s turn to battle public school idiocracy now. Of course, we both realized that we’re spoiled. We put Chicken in private school for a couple of years, and Big T was sort of swept out of our control into the loving arms of Special Ed services, and really, this is the first time we’ve had to worry about such a thing. Seriously–we’ve been parents for 15 years, and this is the first kid we’ve had to register for Kindergarten. Anyway, back to *&^%%&

(*&%###% Virus. My head’s stuffed, my body aches, and all I want to do is sit and knit, but I’ve taken five days off of Bitter Moon II, and one of my most crushing fears in the middle of any book is that I won’t ever finish it. It’s almost psychotic, the way I’m driven to finish a work, or at least show a good faith effort to it almost every day. So I’m going to MAKE myself write two pages–even if it’s crap, crap can be cut or fixed until it’s not crap, but getting out of the habit cannot be so easily changed. I sent off the okay for Bitter Moon I: Triane’s Son Ascending last night. So, that’s about four weeks waiting for it to appear on sale online and for my own copies, and then about three weeks waiting for someone to read it and about another week or two chewing my nails to the quick and waiting for a review. Are we ready? Can we all say this together? Do we need it printed in the program or do we have it memorized? Holy Goddess, Merciful God, Let. It. Not. Suck. Amen.

*&^%$* Me. Mate offered to let me take the tall people to the movies. I was gonna–I really was. And then it occurred to me that the short people were exhausted. They would be asleep really soon. And in the meantime, it would be me, and (get this) A QUIET HOUSE. And so it is. And it’s lovely–truly beautiful. The television isn’t even on. And here’s the reason I suck–all of this quietude, and I can’t but help feeling guilty for not spending time with the tall people.

@##%%^$#@@#%%^^& parental guilt. It’s like an itchy coat–need it to keep warm, but it’s not all that comfy in the long run. I’m gonna go knit with something that doesn’t itch and makes me happy, before I break out in hives.