Can't Talk, Spinning...

Can't Talk, Spinning...

It's getting worse, whatever it is that's making it impossible for me to string four thoughts together and then write them down. Is it the heat/depression/allergies? Is it the fact that when I go home, I have to wade through the mindless chatter of two Small Children and the huh-what-did-you-say futility of talking to That Deaf Woman (formerly known as the Grandmother)? Is it because, with Grandmother on one TV and the Small Children on the other, I can't get near a television connected to the cable for which I personally pay the exhorbitant sum of $48 a month?



Is it because Grandmother's knee went out on Sunday and she is pretty much chair-bound/bedridden, and the whole house (complete with two Small Children) is falling apart at the seams? Is it because I have been solely responsible for scavenging our dinners all week, having to either make a meal myself or else decide if tonight is a Boston Market night or a KFC night or a Taco Bell night? Or because I've had to wash dishes twice, an activity that inexplicably enrages me to the point that I want to break every dish in the house and then slash my wrists and neck with the shards?



Could it be because I have no clean clothes, that I've been wearing bathing-suits and boxer-shorts and jock-straps all week and truffling around on the floor every morning trying to find a shirt that doesn't smell bad? Or because every time I go out to the kitchen to do some laundry, I encounter piles of other people's laundry and bedding because one of the Small Children is a bed-wetter? And then by the time I push a load of wet sheets through the system I've forgotten about my own underwear and t-shirts? Rinse and repeat on a daily basis?



Is it because after I paid my inescapable bills for this period (car, insurance, cable, gym membership, and one credit-card), I will have $85 left to see me through the next two weeks, and with that $85 I have to go to a two-day conference in the City this weekend and the three-day Ducal Ball events next weekend, and both my credit-cards are charged to the max and I only have two hundred in savings to fall back on? Is it because I've been losing sleep running around helping a friend, and work has been oddly busy, and I have headaches all the damn time?



Or, perhaps, could it possibly be all of the above?



Actually, this is the first time I've vented all of the above this week. I didn't realize I was under so much pressure. Granted, it's the kind of pressure young parents face all the time, with people to take care of and money short and too many demands on one's energies. But I'm not a young parent, by choice as well as by inclination; I am instead a self-sufficient and self-involved drag-queen with very little energy and a well-developed need for lots of down-time.



Oh, well. I'm not dead, and I haven't killed anybody... sometimes that's the best you can say of a week, but it's something.



So today I am off to get my nails done (there goes $20, but I must), pick up a white satin corset at Frederick's (it'll fit on the credit card I just paid), and then pick up my sponsee to go with me to the Living Sober Conference in San Francisco. I'm looking forward to this conference, I have been for weeks, it's always such a grand time and I always get so much serenity and sobriety out of it. So what if I have to eat dinner at Burger King instead of some charming Hayes Valley bistro?



Then tomorrow is more conference, with the Living Sober Musical in the middle of the day and the Great Drag Invasion at the big count-down meeting (our theme this year is "Gay Wedding Party"... I am going as a drag groom, hence the need for the white corset to go with my tuxedo), and then the big dance in one room and Drag Bingo in another. It'll be a toot!



On Sunday I have to take the Grandmother and the Daddy and the Small Children down to San Jose for the 4th of July; after swimming and eating too much and schmoozing with la famiglia, I get to do the trip again in reverse (sans the Small Children, thank the goddess) and hopefully get back in time to attend my friend Barry's party in Pinole.



And after all that, I have Monday off so perhaps I'll finally be able to wash a couple of loads of panties as well as squeeze out the end of the first chapter of Worst Luck, which I've been working on in draft format for the last four days. I got hung up the other day trying to plot Danny's route to the gym without actually driving all the way to the City to check that it's possible (which I'll certainly do this weekend while I'm over there), and then I got hung up yesterday trying to make up a good Brazilian name for Danny's Pilates instructor. I'm always getting hung up in details, but it's the details that I love most when I'm reading so I have to pay attention to them when I'm writing.



Until then, have a super Fourth!