Underneath

There's a bunch of crud in my life that feels unbloggable right now. It's the reason I disappeared for a while last month -- didn't feel quite honest writing about my life without talking about it, didn't feel quite right blogging about it. I was thinking that blogging daily during March would be a way to focus on other things, but it still feels like I'm writing around the topics that are really on my mind.

This is a predictably hard time of year. One of the three active substance abusers in my orbit always does some version of "work on substance abuse" for Lent, and it always leaves me feeling squashed and hopeless about now. (Oh, you guys, I want so badly to be snarky about this person's choices. I am so weary of this situation. MOVING ON and DECLINING to be snarky even though this person richly deserves some snark and perhaps some arson.)

A couple of big kid situations are weighing on me as well, but those are not really my stories to tell. Jody has commented about this before -- the difficulties of sharing the experience of mothering teens without sharing too much of the teen's experience -- and it's weighing on me. If you have ever thought to yourself, "Gosh, Jamie writes so confidently about parenting that I wonder if she ever feels like a human casserole of failure and incompetence," the answer is yes. Sometimes (today, in fact!) that's exactly how it feels.

I feel a little like these ducks, actually-- 

--because the usual view doesn't quite show the viewer the frenzied round-and-round that's happening underneath.