Rough Few Days

The past few days have just been damn weary. My marriage was tested big-time, and then, as if a sign from God, last night I offered to help my friend at Job #2 b/c she is waaaaay behind on shelving since they haven't yet hired a replacement for the other shelver that left, and I stumbled across the book Surrendering to Marriage and it had a lot of good stuff in there that I needed to read. I liked the part that said if any married person is at all honest, they will say that marriage can, at times, be hell.

Anyway, it was kind of interesting to observe how my brain totally shut down on Sunday. It was nice to just give myself over to helplessness--b/c when you're at your absolute extreme limits of thought and action and can do no more, it's nice to finally have the freedom to DO NO MORE. There is a great peace in just not giving a shit about anything in the world anymore. Now, you don't want to spend too much time in that place for what I hope are obvious reasons, but on Sunday I was there and I was, for lack of a better word, "happy" to be hiding out there for awhile. Later, S and I made up. I knew we would, and that is one of the many reasons I married him. Meanwhile, my brain is still slowly coming back into play. (It's hard to come back from that place.)

But besides all that, we had a great family weekend up to Sunday. On Sat. we took the baby to her final visit before trial with the amicus atty. and I feel like it went very well. (He told us the whore is pregnant again. Will she and dickhead actually give birth to the true antichrist? Fuckin' scary.) Then we went to the zoo for "Zoo Boo" and had a fun time there. I had decided to not be so hard on the baby anymore in terms of her behavior and to give her all the attention she wanted. I've been reading this extremely disturbing book that I cannot put down called The Working Poor: Invisible in America and it talks about the vicious cycle that is poverty and also the station of children in that cycle. I'm especially distressed by reading the kids' stories. I remember in 2004 having the misfortune of waiting for a bus in Anacostia, where some of these kids' stories take place. I was with P. in VA and I desperately wanted to go see my hero Frederick Douglass' house in Anacostia but we had to take a bus to get there since P.'s car was back at my hotel in DC. We waited in misery for about an hour. We were surrounded by a huge crowd of some of the ghettoiest blacks you can imagine. Pre-teen girls were loudly cussing and actually smoking a joint right in front of us. They acted like animals. I was so disgusted. Eventually P. and I gave up and went back to DC. Frederick Douglass must be rolling over in his grave.

But I digress. Anyway, a certain line from that book struck me. It said that these certain types of parents complain about their kids acting out, saying that they're just trying to get attention. Well, the books says, but children need attention. Whoa... I guess I'd forgotten that lately. I paid extra attention to the baby this weekend and played with her every time she asked (as opposed to taking breaks from her and burying my nose in my book) and she actually didn't need much scolding either. Funny how that works out.

Nice weather we're having here. Don't have to turn on the a/c at home which means saving money, yay! S and I tried to run on Monday night but had to settle for walking laps due to the rain and the wind. We were the only ones out at the park. I was in no mood to run anyway since my brain still wasn't working right. My appetite is slowly returning also, which is good. I told DH, if you ever see me NOT eating, you know that it is deadly serious. I only lose my appetite in the most dire of circumstances, and I'd lost it on Sunday-Tuesday.