This Performance Totally Unenhanced

I'm drowning in stupid school assignments, and the puppy gets up at five or six and then she goes back to sleep but I usually don't, and Angus is on pitching rest because his elbow hurts and physio should help but he's worried and frustrated so I'm sad and frustrated. And he has an infected ingrown toenail and we had to get his kidneys checked because of the bloodwork because of his acne medication, and I had to take my dad for cataract surgery, so I've visited a goodly proportion of the hospitals and doctors' offices in this area recently. So I'm taking it a little bit easy right now, which I'm almost okay with. I got a fair bit done in the basement in January and anything major there is on hold, although sometimes I go down and do ten minutes of Swistle's little bit of something. Tonight I cleaned out a bag of Christmas gift bags, packaged them together and put all the wrapping paper in the now-empty long bag. Every few days I walk fairly slowly on the treadmill for half an hour. Eve and I went to a play that her friend had a small part in at Angus's school last week and it was fun.

My contacts keep giving me pink eye, which is kind of a first world problem, and I have new glasses that I like quite a bit, but I hate wearing glasses to work out and I'd like to have the option not to wear them occasionally when I'm dressing up. I have an appointment next week to investigate what the hell is up with that.

I'm in a squirrelly reading place; once Lucy's in her crate I can only read on the ipad because if the light is on she won't go to sleep (thank god I didn't get a dog before I had an ipad), and I feel completely daunted by the prospect of reading anything weighty, so I keep reading short stories and YA even though I said I was going to take a break from YA, but I HAVE A BABY DOG AND WE'RE IN NUCLEAR WINTER OVER HERE SO SHUT UP OKAY? Although please learn from my mistakes and do not, under any circumstances, start THIS particular YA train wreck. It sucks you in with a gorgeous cover and an interest-piquing premise and ends in a hot mess.

Anyway, tonight we managed to have dinner together at the table, then we were in the family room while Angus was icing his elbow watching Sportscenter and Matt was reading the paper and I was trying to get the dog to fetch her ball and Eve was reading the second City of Ember book on the couch. She would glance up periodically at the tv, as they were doing a piece on Alex Rodriguez and his use of performance-enhancing drugs. At one point a date span was flashed onscreen, as well as a front page with the headline "Regrets: He Has a Few". Eve burst out "that's so mean! He just died, and he was only, like, sixteen!" To which we all replied, "Huh?" And she said "it said 1996-2000". And Matt said "that was his career, not his lifespan, and you need to check your facts AND your math."

Dear February: Whatever you need to take to improve this performance, PLEASE DO IT FORTHWITH.