The plight of the whales, Little Baby Lens, and lupus: a snapshot of my idiosyncrasies
<p>Lately, the weeks have been flying by (cliche), but the speedy passage of time has just further added to the minor funk I've been in. Ethan is finishing 4th grade, Oliver is prepping for kindergarten, Harry is sleeping in his own room, the whales are d
Lately, the weeks have been flying by (cliche), but the speedy passage of time has just further added to the minor funk I've been in.
I guess it all started earlier in the week with a lupus flare. (I have lupus, by the way. It's mild and manageable and mostly manifests as fatigue and achiness, and sometimes a facial rash.) So whenever I have a flare—this one probably caused by spending time in the sun, maybe with a not-high-enough SPF?—the fatigue is a real bummer because I like doing stuff.
Don't get me wrong, I am NOT an over-scheduler. I'm a homebody. But things that under normal circumstances I could let slide without getting too agitated start to bother me more because I think "if I wasn't tired and needing to rest, I'd be doing this." I'd rather let things like tidying and floor cleaning slide for fun reasons, not annoying ones, like dumb lupus.
Can we also discuss the word "lupus"? I haven't looked up the origin, but I can't help but think of Professor Lupin, and the French word loupe, meaning wolf.
Please hold...
Okay, yes, the term lupus is the Latin for wolf, assigned back in the Middle Ages by a doctor who noted that sometimes the facial rash looked like a wolf bite. Which is...kind of cool? I guess?
Still, that doesn't help me feel better about people leaving their socks scattered around the house, or bits and bobs on tables, or little shreds of garbage floating around (popsicle wrapper snippets, Big League Chew wads, things to be recycled).
Speaking of recycling, the plight of the whales has really been bringing me down this week.
In a stroke of luck, I spotted an unusual garbage truck, which led me to the home-related discovery of the year: a waste removal company that offers recycle pickup in our unincorporated neighborhood. So now we don't have to collect our recycling in an increasingly stinky plastic tub in the back of my car, which also means I don't have to ignore my mom when she yells at me for taking up all the space in their recycle bin when I empty our stinky tub into it.
I realize I didn't have to do either of those things, but in another sense, I did have to. Conservationism is part of my soul and the great problems of natural resources plague me when my defenses are low.
So back to the whales. I'm always a pretty empathetic person—which is why I refuse to watch local news or sensational true crime shows (and why all these celebrity suicides are just too much)—but this postpartum era has me looking at every breathing person or animal as Somebody's Baby Once. This really puts a damper on all athletic competitions (baseball games, the NBA finals, Oliver's soccer team, reality dance shows).
In addition to the You Used to Be a Little Baby problem, I'm also dealing with lupus fog, which makes everything a teensy bit more of a chore and a teensy bit more aggravating. (Example: For someone who deals in words, resorting to phrases like "it's the thing on the blue thing" is tremendously annoying.) Basically, lupus fog lowers my coping threshold a wee bit.
Earlier this week, I heard about the pilot whale in Thailand that died because of plastic in the ocean. Combine that Newborn Baby Lens and my ingrained propensity for planet-love, and I've been fixated on the plight of the whales all week. I vowed to never walk into a store without my reusable bags again, only to walk into several stores without my reusable bags because lupus fog made me forget.
Ugh.
In other news, Ethan's just about done with school for the year. Today is his final Friday of 4th grade, to which I say
Oliver will be starting kindergarten in the fall and I'm not talking about it right now, please see above reasons.