Friable

Easily crumbled or crushed into powder. It’s how I’m feeling these days. I don’t think I’m toxic, as in friable asbestos, but I’m certainly frayed around the edges, and in need of binding. Or a new hem.

I don’t know why. Could be that it’s getting darker earlier. Could be that I keep getting calendar reminders that my mother’s birthday is – would be? – next week. Could be that the child is pushing all of my buttons. Could be that I’m just worried.

Sunday, we headed off in the car for an adventure – lunch and a garden tour. We hadn’t even gotten to the bottom of our street when the kid burst into hysterics and wailed that she wanted to go home. Naturally, I kept driving. She continued to sob, her father started to glower, and I wanted to leave the two of them on the side of the highway to walk home. As we pulled into the iconic roadside attraction hamburger joint for lunch, she sniffed and asked for a Coke – and perked right up when I said yes. A Coke, some chicken nuggets and a ride on the 50¢ helicopter and she was right as rain.

Like everyone else I know, I’m kind of worried about money. My husband has been out of work since April – not because he was laid off, but because he’s gone blind in one eye. When it first happened, he was told that there was a good chance that the vision that spontaneously disappeared would spontaneously return. It’s now been nearly six months, and there’s been no change. He received short term disability for a while, but that ran out, and the process of filing for long term disability is deeply convoluted and increasingly attenuated. So, we’re short a salary, and we’re paying more for health insurance, and there are property taxes and mortgages and bills bills bills to be paid, and the girlie needs new shoes. On top of the worry brought on by the eye problems and attendant absence of cash is the fact that I was hoping, dearly and not unreasonably hoping, that his job was going to morph into the kind of wonderful that would allow me to quit mine and find something part time and close to home. Alas, that wasn’t meant to be. And I shouldn’t whine – I do have a job after all, and we do have health insurance, and we do have a roof over our heads.

But I’m tired, and on Sunday, after we got home from our salvaged outing, I was struck by a palpable feeling of not rightness, a physical manifestation of whatever dark cloud is sitting on my soul right now. If you look at me sideways, I’ll burst into tears. I turned off my alarm this morning, and forgot to get up. I'm waylaid by inertia and I'm cranky to a fare-thee-well.

Do tell me that this too shall pass.