Weary

I’m sitting at a the kitchen table, the house an absolute disaster area: cheese from last night’s cheese burgers is smeared into the table’s surface; dead flies I have killed with the swatter and swept to the floor lay with their legs up; a pile of last year’s school projects and papers are awaiting filing and photographing; and toys litter the house like they fell from the sky.

I am so very tired. Literally. I’ve been getting up before the crack of dawn (insert joke here for those who know me) so I can be at the office by 6:00 a.m. to put in about seven hours of work, taking pictures of kids who don’t want their pictures taken. My co-workers all happen to be hardcore Christians who always seem to say inappropriate and racial things while in the privacy of the car we travel in. Today the one was saying how she had caught a few minutes of the Miss Universe and how one contestant, Miss Mexico, didn’t even look Mexican! *gasp!* While I don’t have any preconceptions how Miss Mexico might look, I am not sure what my co-worker is thinking. Dark hair. Dark eyes. I wonder…is it because she’s….I don’t know….PRETTY or SMART?? Yeah, I don’t get it either.

Or how about this one: the other co-worker mentioned how Ann Coultier said that Obama wasn’t Muslim – he’s Atheist! *gasp!* I made the “mistake” of saying I wouldn’t give a shit if he was Wiccan; what difference does it make?? Oh you would think I had just cursed the wee baby Jesus to hell in a handbasket. *double gasp!*

Sigh.

The day gives me lots of time to think, but not to make notes or draft or even read, just think. I think about my post on Doodicus. I wonder if I am making a big deal of nothing. Maybe all eight year olds are this neurotic, which is to say maybe he’s not at all neurotic and that it’s just me expecting too much from him.

Is it normal for him to cry when his sister tears up his fundraising brochure he brought home from school? Is it normal for him to be terrified of the sound of wind blowing at night? Is it normal that he sees “then” instead of “when” and “through” instead of “thought” and not even stop to think about whether the sentence makes sense when he reads out loud the wrong word?

With all the thinking I do about it, I realize it won’t be long and he’ll be a teenager and completely influenced by anyone but his parents. If we can’t get this right now, will we all suffer the consequences?

I am tired.

of thinking

of worrying

of hoping if it’s hopeless

of fighting for what’s right and fighting to BE right

of being tired