Lately around the casa things have been more than a little stressfull.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rate it around a 14.

(as an aside, why couldn’t the physicist who proposed the temperature
scale back 300 years ago have had an easier to spell surname? I mean,
really. Is it too hard to have somebody named Fischer or Schmidt or
something? Anyway)

Most of this is My Fault ™ but that isn’t helping me much. I
seem to be paralyzed an unable to move, like I’m bogged down in a swam
(see also: Iraq Liberation).

My son and I have stopped screaming at each other in the mornings, for
the most part. Still blew up on Saturday night in a lovely little
episode that had me returning one of his video games (at a huge loss)
and the entire Playstation system shoved in a closet for an indefinite
amount of time. Yeah, I’m proud of THAT, let me tell you. But he
worked on his homework yesterday, in hopes of seeing some of the big
basketball game tonite (and I STILL haven’t filled in my brackets, but
I think I can at least get some of them right).

My wife’s birthday was probably the crappiest birthday I’ve given her
in years (although I’m sure she’ll correct me on this point, I’ve
probably just blocked out the crappier ones for obvious reasons). I
made her a cake, which was yummy, and tried to make buttercream icing,
which was not so yum, but edible. Other than that we went to church
(stress!) and cleaned house and did a mountain of laundry (and there’s
still more to do) and she even cooked her own dinner while I was doing
something else (I think laundry related but now I’m not sure).

I think the parenthetical taxation people will be looking for me, so
perhaps I should end this here. No point, really, just venting.

Oh, here’s a funny. Overheard my son asking my wife (we get these
kinds of questions more often than you think):

Him: Mom, would it hurt more if you were shot in the spleen or in the privates?

Her: um, well, you can live without your privates, not so much without
a spleen. (I must add: she’s obviously female, I’d probably give it a
try the other way around)

Him: You mean, like girls? Because they don’t have privates.