Monday, Monday
Yes, it actually can feel that bad. Today started out in quite the lousy fashion. I'd had an insane week last week, culminating in a two-day, 800-mile-round-trip drive to northern Maine for work. I was looking forward to the time alone - maybe I could do some thinkin' about the job that is driving me slowly batty, and the welter of thoughts around the kid issue.
Instead, I listened to books on tape (Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver, which I read years ago, and Black & Blue by Anna Quindlen. Coincidentally, both involved missing kids. And both cause one to tear up just a tad -- dangerous when passing large logging trucks on windy, wooded roads.) . And I drove. And I drove and I drove and I drove. And that's about all the thinking I did. In the motel room, I painted my toenails and read another Laurie Colwin novel.
When I got home about 4:30 on Friday, S. and T. and cutie-pie C. were hanging out in my backyard, drinking beer. (Well, C. did have a bottle, but hers was full of millk.) And thus began about 44 hours of catching up, teaching C. about the beach and eating. We put a serious dent in this week's veggie delivery, and even made it out to our favorite hippie/gourmet pizza place as C. snoozed in her swanky stroller.
After they headed out on Sunday afternoon, we got some stuff done around the house (ie, D. threw towels in the wash and went grocery shopping, while I read Entertainment Weekly and dozed on the couch), then headed out to see Garden State with some friends. Loved the movie - it was perfect for a gray, foggy August afternoon. As someone somewhere commented, like any first movie, it's got some flaws, but it says some really interesting things about home and family that I thought about quite a bit afterwards.
And, to finally get to this morning - on which I awoke grumpy and irritated, amazed that the weekend could really be done - I was at work early, listening to Lucy Kaplansky and plowing through the 60 e-mails that had accumulated in two days. At the fabulous hour of 8:40, the publisher called me into her office to discuss the new mandate from the board: Expenses bad. Revenues good.
Simple, right? But the problem here is that the editorial department of a publication only directly produces expenses. Yeah, we write good stories that make cool people want to buy the paper, which makes advertisers want to buy ads that are seen by those people -- but directly? All we do is spend money. Which means that I am going to spend the next four months of this Very Crucial year watching every penny in an already miniscule budget. At a job that I am already questioning every day. Not a good turn of events.
D. and I had planned to talk tonight about where we are re: kids. But he had a lousy day, too - so bad that I found him flat on the couch, sniffling with allergies or the start of a cold, watching the E True Hollywood Story. On Justine Bateman. Bad, bad, bad.
As for tomorrow? It starts with a dentist appointment.
Instead, I listened to books on tape (Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver, which I read years ago, and Black & Blue by Anna Quindlen. Coincidentally, both involved missing kids. And both cause one to tear up just a tad -- dangerous when passing large logging trucks on windy, wooded roads.) . And I drove. And I drove and I drove and I drove. And that's about all the thinking I did. In the motel room, I painted my toenails and read another Laurie Colwin novel.
When I got home about 4:30 on Friday, S. and T. and cutie-pie C. were hanging out in my backyard, drinking beer. (Well, C. did have a bottle, but hers was full of millk.) And thus began about 44 hours of catching up, teaching C. about the beach and eating. We put a serious dent in this week's veggie delivery, and even made it out to our favorite hippie/gourmet pizza place as C. snoozed in her swanky stroller.
After they headed out on Sunday afternoon, we got some stuff done around the house (ie, D. threw towels in the wash and went grocery shopping, while I read Entertainment Weekly and dozed on the couch), then headed out to see Garden State with some friends. Loved the movie - it was perfect for a gray, foggy August afternoon. As someone somewhere commented, like any first movie, it's got some flaws, but it says some really interesting things about home and family that I thought about quite a bit afterwards.
And, to finally get to this morning - on which I awoke grumpy and irritated, amazed that the weekend could really be done - I was at work early, listening to Lucy Kaplansky and plowing through the 60 e-mails that had accumulated in two days. At the fabulous hour of 8:40, the publisher called me into her office to discuss the new mandate from the board: Expenses bad. Revenues good.
Simple, right? But the problem here is that the editorial department of a publication only directly produces expenses. Yeah, we write good stories that make cool people want to buy the paper, which makes advertisers want to buy ads that are seen by those people -- but directly? All we do is spend money. Which means that I am going to spend the next four months of this Very Crucial year watching every penny in an already miniscule budget. At a job that I am already questioning every day. Not a good turn of events.
D. and I had planned to talk tonight about where we are re: kids. But he had a lousy day, too - so bad that I found him flat on the couch, sniffling with allergies or the start of a cold, watching the E True Hollywood Story. On Justine Bateman. Bad, bad, bad.
As for tomorrow? It starts with a dentist appointment.
posted by mc at 10:43 PM
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