not the new normal

After my mom flew home, I cried all over everything. Doing the dishes, in the shower, into couch pillows. I didn't mean to, it just happened; some instinctive response to stop us from getting separated from the herd and falling into a tar pit. I didn't need a tar pit, though, because I also had a head cold, and was busy burying myself in soggy tissues. And I couldn't sleep, except long enough to have short, crappy dreams about not being able to sleep.

After a few days of this, though, I was feeling bushy-eyed and overtired. Maybe it was just because I changed out of boots and into sneakers during lunch break. Sneakers are made out of the hides of very energetic creatures. Wikipedia tells me that they are made of "vulcanized rubber". So in my Vulcan-hide sneakers, in the late evening, when the library was quiet and empty, I raced my book cart around the stacks. I dug out all the sex and gore books hidden by 5th graders behind the comics and replaced them with better ones. Found a novelty cookie cutter in my bag and took a picture of it. Felt kind of okay for a bit.

In the morning I hid my face in my coffee cup, embarrassed about acting like a damn idiot. Is this like when someone dies and you feel guilt the first time you laugh? Nothing wrong with being a damn idiot. I put on Hepburn swoops of eyeliner, dressed in new pants and a nice black shirt, adjusted my bosoms, and found some stupid stripey green fleece socks. Start small.

I walked Leif into preschool, eyeing him for signs of my head cold. He looked fine. A few small sniffles, a cough over his cereal that morning, but nothing gooey or rattling - and anyway, his teachers would call me at work if he started spouting green snot. One of the dads walked by.

"How's that cough?"
"Oh?" Leif isn't coughing, was he coughing yesterday? Our kids aren't even in the same class. "Seems ok. He has allergies, a bit, so it's hard to tell what's cats and what's cold." What am I talking about?
The dad said, "Because he can just keep that cough to himself! Haha."

I started to say, "HAHA. IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE I'M DOING THIS ALL BY MYSELF," but I did not say that, because that doesn't even make any sense. Holy shit, I'm already turning into an unhinged hermit. I need to get a trespassers will be shot sign and a string of squirrels. (Fun fact: when I do a google image search for "hermit with squirrels", I get a bunch of furry porn. Don't do that.)

The "new normal" is going to find me soon. And I won't be a crazy-eyed, squirrel-porn-nightmare-suffering  person when it comes.