Wheels spinning and the smell of something burning

I'm sort of stuck. All around stuck, I mean, but also blog stuck. I find myself staring at the screen, and thinking I need to force myself to organize a couple of thoughts into a coherent post because it's good practice. Then I wonder if I should be littering the internet with my mental parings if I have to work that hard to scrape up a post. But withdrawing from everything is kind of what direction I feel like I'm going, and I don't think I should just go with that.

It's been sunny most of the week. Everyone's all shiny and happy about the goddamned sun. Spring is coming. There's a new energy. I'm supposed to feel like washing curtains and cleaning out closets and delivering calves and whittling chairs. Instead I find it immensely difficult to do anything that requires concentration or deep thought -- or even to remember that I want to. I've been trying to practice the piano every day. Some days I remember, but more often, the minute I wander out into the living room it's like the piano throws a cloaking field around itself ('move along, move along, nothing to see here -- isn't there a bad sitcom or a fruit roll-up calling your name?'). I'm supposed to see the sun and want to go out and bathe in its warmth and promise. Instead I see the sun and think, Jesus, it's way too bright out there.

I'm trying not to think it's all my fault. I think I might just need a slight tune-up of the pharmaceutical variety. I did force myself out to the gym this morning, and then I got a few groceries downstairs at Loblaws. I walked back and forth in front of the ice cream section for a good ten minutes. It was all too expensive, or the wrong flavour, or had too much fat. I ended up not buying ice cream, and feeling like a big weenie. Angus's Nintendo DS was lost for a week or so. He hadn't been playing with it, and then when we tried to find it it wasn't in any of the usual places. I didn't think it was his fault -- we'd packed it for a few trips, and we thought it might have got left in a bag or packed away by accident. My Mom eventually found it under the bed the kids sleep in when they're at her place. I was relieved, not just because it's expensive, but because it sticks in my craw when anything is missing. But here's the thing -- I can't stop looking for it. Every time I take laundry downstairs or recycle newspapers or clean out a drawer, I find myself looking for the DS (insert bad metaphor here).

So I'm faking it a little bit. But that's not necessarily such a bad thing. Yesterday I had nowhere I had to be, nothing I had to do, and I was on the verge of royally screwing up a day off, wallowing aimlessly in bad tv and trans fats. I decided to clean and cook. Finding the surface of the dining room table and moving the pile of outgrown clothing that was preventing my husband from opening his bottom dresser drawer didn't necessarily make me feel fantastic, but it probably sucked less than inhaling a bag of cheetos while watching the Price of Right would have. Then I decided to take Eve to do the build-a-bear that was one of her birthday presents when she got home from school, even though the prospect of entering a mall was slightly less appealing than the prospect of stabbing myself in the eye with a hot sauce-tipped bamboo stake. And it was great. She was adorable, and grateful, and excited, and sunshiny. She made a rainbow bear and dressed it like a fairy princess and ate a humongous slice of cheese pizza and rainbow ice cream and mentioned that babies are 'really cute, but a tiny bit annoying' because one was crying rather loudly a couple of tables over. She told me I was the best. And suddenly I wasn't really faking it any more. I wasn't the best, but I was better.

Okay, I just went looking for a funny picture of fake boobs to link to (fake -- get it?), to make this less whiny and leaden. Did you know there's a website called Rate my Melons? Anyway, nothing I found was remotely funny or appropriate, and now I'm worried that the next time my son tries to check his email he might click in the wrong place and be scarred for life. I promise I'll try to be funnier tomorrow (if I haven't been locked up on the advice of Children's Aid).