So, yesterday featured two flavors of drama.

Drama the First: I got really queasy around four o’clock, just after walking down to the grocery store with my lil boobnibblers for some dinner fixins. I sat down on the couch and Franny said, “Wow, Mom, you don’t look so good. Your face looks weird. Can I go outside?”

I almost missed it, but I think that might have been a fleeting moment of compassion. I think my children are too secure.

I remember when I was Franny’s age my mom got food poisoning and spent a lot of time upstairs for a day. I had never heard of food poisoning, but it sounded pretty fatal, so I was freaked out that I was going to spend the rest of my life alone with my stepfather. And this was shortly after I had moved back in with my mom after an extended separation, so I wasn’t sure which end was up. Plus I was one of those melodrama tots who got early access to movies set in the era of TB, so I was thinking that people were still prettily wasting away, leaving a lovely if emaciated corpse and their five starving children were then forced to become loaf-nabbing street rogues.

I asked Franny to please put the cold items away, and to bring me a glass of water. The room kept throbbing in that Oh Shit, Stomach Flu way and I started working on a migraine, which I hardly ever get. I thought it was just a migraine, but my guts started rumbling too.

So, finally, after several minutes of fighting it, my cup raneth over, and I ended up on the bathroom floor while the children played unconcernedly mere feet away from me, as I waited for Death or Companion, whichever one was coming home first.

At one point, Strudel came in, I thought to check in with me, but she moved closer silently and I could hear that animally toddler mouth-breathing that they do sometimes.

Then she stomped on my head three times until I swatted her away.

“What happened, Mom?”

“Strudel stomped on my head.”

“Oh. Can I have a cookie?”

And then I made some kind of miraculous recovery. I sipped lots of water and Companion fed me some Pepto. I skipped dinner and then put the kids to bed, and made Vietnamese bun after they were down, but with no meat. I made my own nuoc cham to go on top, but it never tastes like having it out. Has anyone found a bottled nuoc cham sauce that really tastes like out sauce?

And the Number Two Drama was a work-related thing. Someone tried to dump some work on me that was at least a month overdue, and I said no. Without going into too many details, let me say that it was something that was being done by hand that could have taken a morning’s effort using a word processing program.

My point is, one of my least favorite things is when you say “no” to someone, feel justified in doing it, and they look at you like you are a big meanie meanhead. And then you realize there are about four levels of cluelessness there. The not knowing how to do the job in the first place. The not realizing the inappropriateness of the task being dumped on me. And then the getting offended when turned down.

It’s weird. Sometimes I say no, and then when a situation like this unfurls I just feel sorry for the person, when they are walking off thinking I’m just a big asshole. Actually, I just want you to learn to fish for a lifetime (or something) rather than relying on others to clean up your messes. Especially me.

Good Stuffs:
1. Emo Fight
2. Girls Read Comics and They’re Pissed.
3. Also, American Libraries Direct, the newsletter of the American Libraries Association, included a small blurb on the lolbrarian “movement.” The picture they used was my Nancy Pearl macro.

Who’s easily amused? I am! I’m easily amused. FTW!