This post is an experiment.
I'm not accustomed to trying to write anything when I've had about three hours of sleep, and my doddering, ancient A/C is about to emulate the Blues Brothers' cruiser, and my kids are 15 feet away having a Greco-Roman Wii-nybrook. (Say it with me: "WEENYBROOK!") They really have honed their skills of conjuring conflict out of anything. (That LEGO is MY LEGO and YOU TOUCHED IT!) They are alchemists of antagonism. They are antalchemists.
Worse, they are playing a game which very aptly translates to "Les Lapins Crétins" in French, and the constant aural affront, mostly in the form of screaming and trumpet blasts, is making my eye twitch.
I'm embarrassed to have bought this game, much less to let them play it, because from what I've seen it has all the redeeming value of a throatpunch. But after 2+ weeks at the shore, and an 11-hour drive looming on Monday, this is Inertia Week. I've promised to let the boys direct their daily flow. They're up for a pretty weird month as we all transition to Ann Arbor, and I think all this computer mayhem is actually calming them down. This somehow makes sense to me, but I admit in my current state my sense-o-meter ain't all it could be.
We have a new plan, since I still need to find housing in A2. So I'll spend the first 10 days of August out there, trying to convince right-thinking people that it's OK to rent to a freelance writer with intermittent cash flow. In fact, I've been telling potential landlords about my blog, just to show them what a charming (and solvent) person and doting father I am. (Hello, Potential Landlords! I swear I don't normally let my kids use video games to turn their brains to nougat.)
And while I'm doing that, I will be living at least part of the time (and very gratefully!) in my ex-in-laws' basement. Among the cats. Nocturnal, affectionate cats.
It's a lot for my exhausted brain to process, but I am planning on doing an August Blop to commemorate it. In the meantime, I spend lots of time looking at this picture, which was our morning view in New Hampshire:
It reminds me that, one day, all this will be long over, and I will laugh myself to sleep in my hammock.
