Puddles and puddles to wallow in

I've been feeling overwhelmed.

For nearly two months, my husband has been working seven days a week, many of them out of town, meaning he is not just gone all day, but gone for days at a time. I have learned to cope with the travel, but the neverendingness has begun to wear me down.

Our rental house (read: bane of my existence) is going to be empty again at the end of the month and if we don't find new renters, we will have to come up with that mortgage payment. So I've been posting it and reposting it on Craig's list and trying to schedule showings between my job and my kids and my sanity. But it's not just the lack of renters, it's the projects.

There are many projects to be done at the rental house. Repairs that went happily unmentioned in the two years our former renters (who fled to Florida) lived there, but now must be dealt with by the end of the month if I am to entertain this notion of finding new people to live there.

All of this is costing money. (Did I mention that property taxes are due on the 15th too?) Money that I either don't have or don't want to spend, as I try ot reassure myself that I won't remain a cubicle hamster forever...or for much longer...or at least, please, just tell me how much longer.

Oh, and it's been raining. Every day. And I think maybe that was the final straw...the third or fourth consecutive day of rain piled onto the single parenting and the financial stress was just too much. I don't know how people in Seattle do it...maybe the coffee and high quality sushi makes everything more tolerable.

Anyway, I've been overwhelmed. Sinking beneath this anxiety that builds and builds. Waking up at night with my jaw clenched. I hope that I am mentioning this more as an afterthought, that it will soon come to an end...I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

As of yesterday, my husband is now back to working mostly five days a week - a large percentage of that is still out of town, but I can safely plan on seeing him for more than one consecutive day at a time, now and then.

I've started hacking away at that house project list and am turning the rest over to my husband because, sexist stereotypes be damned, I f*ing hate house projects.

We have another showing at the house tomorrow...who knows? Maybe this will be the one.

I don't yet have a solution to the work issue, but as I've wrestled with this whole "what am I doing with my life?" question for many years now, I've grown comfortable with this uncertainty. Ok, maybe not comfortable, but I can tolerate it at least.

As for the rain, well, the meteorologists are suggesting it might turn to snow this weekend. Snow. Just the thought makes me appreciate the rain more. Please, oh please, let there be one last sunny day before we are enveloped by the gray shadow of winter.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

We're having a midday thunderstorm. My husband is out of town on business. The teenager will likely be busy with things I don't want to know about until much later this evening.

I want to make buttery popcorn and pile the kids into my bed and watch TV for the rest of the day. Is that only okay if someone is sick?

More than likely, the TV trick would only last for an hour max anyway, as we tend to have trouble agreeing on what to watch and I am only physically capable of sitting through two episodes of "Little Einsteins," "Handy Manny" or "Super Why" per 24-hour period. My tolerance for Dora and "The Wonder Pets" is even shorter.

Really, my proverbial prayers would be answered if there happened to be a "Glutton for Punishment" marathon on the Food Network today. Have you seen this show? A Canadian foodie travels the world, gets 5 days to learn an odd food custom or skill and then has to show off his mastery of it, usually by entering some local competition devoted to said custom or skill. I started Tivoing it just because I like travel and food, but then my kids got into it, so now it's a weekly must-watch.

Favorites include the egg frying competition (where they fried eggs using the heat of the sun in the desert) and the watermelon seed spitting episode. The Gloucestershire cheese rolling was also entertaining, mostly because a bunch of grown men tumbling down a hill behind a piece of cheese seems just as bizarre to my 4-year-olds as it does to me. The only episode I wished I'd pre-screened was the Fugu (those freaky poisonous blowfish) one, just because there were frequent mentions of the possibility that Bob (the beloved host) could actually die if he didn't prepare the fish correctly...that maybe was a little too tense for the preschool set.

Anyway, I haven't been smart enough to save all the old episodes on Tivo for a rainy day, so if I do attempt to enact my TV-in-bed plan, I'm afraid the best I can hope for is an "Ace of Cakes" rerun...unless maybe I could lure them into a Muppets movie marathon.