This week we are home bound. Due to germs coming in and germs going out, we aren't going to preschool, inviting people over, going over to anyone's house, or subjecting any babysitter to potentially muck-and-mire-ish type situations.
In other words, I'm doing a lot of laundry. More laundry than I ever wanted to. Oh, I'd say to myself, "It would be nice to just have a day stuck at home and knock out all that laundry." Well, I did. I did it all. It is washed, folded, [almost] all put away, and the bins are empty. There are no towels growing mold in the washer because I went somewhere and forgot to change them over... because I didn't go anywhere. ANYWHERE. Alright, I'll stop screaming about it.
As I sat queen-like in my pajamas, surrounded by my subjects of tees, panties, and socks, I remembered Christmas music. "It makes everything better!" I thought. I grabbed my computer and set out to buy a Christmas CD, one of my faves, one that I had lost. The great thing about iTunes is that you don't even have to get in the car, or wait for the mailman, it's just there. Well, so I thought.
Being repelled like an intruder at Fort Knox for not remembering my password and failing miserably to come up with an acceptable replacement... was not even the worst of it. Upon loading the iTunes store I was assailed by a sleek, dripping, shiny picture of this sexy singer as if she were the cover of SI Swim Issue. Then the whole store's page loaded and it was all HER. Boobs, thighs, gleaming thighs, and all in different kinds of shimmery negligee. Between the soft porn I was viewing and the password barricade I had had it. I slammed on the X, shutting down the program. "Screw Apple." Right, I know, not the choicest phrase. In fact, rather hypocritical given my grievances. I digress.
Being the resourceful woman that I am I emailed my husband and asked him to pick up the CD for me at Target. I hinted at Apple's treachery in my email.
That night over dinner Josh explained that he had tried to find the CD in two stores, but neither had it. I thanked him, sincerely. Then he sort of smirked as he asked why I was so enraged about Apple. It was all I needed. In a machine gun blast of words, most of which were "apple," "porn," "Fort Knox," and "mad mad mad," I answered him, nearly out of breath and trying to peel my eyebrows off my hairline by the time I was finished. He laughed.
"Huh," he said, "I may have to check that out."
"Whhaaaaatt?" I sent my eyebrows from my hairline to his pupils. "Aren't you mad?! It's wildly inappropriate!"
"Yes, of course it is. I know."
"Be MAD with me!" I exclaimed.
He laughed again, a slow chuckle, and again I entreated him.
"Hannah, I don't know. I just don't have the energy to be mad right now."
I think the sheer force of his logic sat me back in my chair (at that point I think I was hovering genie-like over the kitchen table. Luckily the kids were already up and playing somewhere else). He was right, of course. Besides the fact that this is the craziest month at work he has ever had (and that right there at least is no exaggeration), and the fact that we have two energy charged and play date starved children, and the fact that our feisty survivor Sam is still very very feisty; besides all of this we had the stomach bug in our house this weekend. It felled Jonathan and me like thirty foot trees and left Josh standing amid the wreckage holding a baby.
I wanted to stuff all that anger back inside of me, pick it out of the air like blueberries and eat the energy up. He is right, I don't have the energy to get angry, so why do I? I suppose that sometimes it is the fuel I need to rocket me out of the exhaustion and into the go-go-go. Nevertheless, that energy gets burned. It burns up like fuel and it's gone. I should have laughed along with him, since that always seems to pay back some of the debt.
