don't bring me down, Bruuuuuce.

Another song from my formative years that I could never understand. Who is Bruce, anyway? I supposed if I google'd ELO and don't bring me down together, I'd find some fangeek page that would explain the lyrics, but I don't care enough to do that.

I heard this particular blast from the past on my after-dinner dash over to Fry's to buy some ice cream for dessert. (Note: very good, but also very sweet. I did not read the ingredient list before I bought it. Bad Mommy! Well, a little high fructose corn syrup every now and then isn't going to bring on Type II diabetes. I hope.)

I feel horrible (mentally), and tired ( physically). (Yes, I am using ice cream as a comfort mechanism -- do you have a problem with that?) Also, more or less unprepared even though the laundry is done, and all my paperwork is assembled. I've even printed out my boarding pass!

I have to leave here around 11 and I haven't packed a stitch of clothes -- I haven't figured out what to bring, yet. Yeesh. And since I'm up so late tonight, I won't have much time to figure it out in the morning. Oh well. At least everything's clean.

I don't want to go. Somehow that flat declarative statement fails utterly to convey how deeply I do not want to go. I keep asking DH, How would it be if I stayed home and didn't have cancer, instead? He does not appreciate my sense of humor, I think -- I can't honestly assess since I am so agitated that everything annoys me. It's like every nerve is extra-sensitive now. I have that "need to cry" feeling and it has been there most of the day. But I don't cry because nothing changes when I cry, except afterwards I feel really sick. So my not-crying has nothing to do with being brave and stoic and "doing what must be done" and all that crap. If I could cry without feeling worse afterwards, I probably would.

Except in front of the kids, that's way too much for them to handle. Only happy tears from Mom are allowed in front of the kids, unless someone died or something. Since I'm trying to minimize how much they freak out, I'm holding all my emotions in check around them.

Today was way too busy and not at all the kind of "last day home" that I would have scripted for myself. I could be pissy and blame DH but it is not his fault. If I had wanted things to be different all I needed to do was 1) speak up and 2) have my act much more together than it has been. Not that my act has been incompetent lately, not by a long shot -- but I keep letting things fall through the cracks and then when I rediscover them I have to attend to them right away, and that pushes something else off schedule.

It rather helps to have a very hard deadline, like the departure time of my flight out. I really don't care if I don't get much sleep tonight. Once I get to the airport tomorrow the only person I'll have to look after is myself, so I can nod off in the terminal and fall asleep on the plane, too. And take a nap at the hotel before R comes in (much later than me.)

I'm scared for myself and worried about my family, and trying not to be either one. It's kind of a recursive worry -- I worry about my family worrying over me. It's kind of silly, and completely unproductive. Part of the worry is non-recursive, straight-forward worry about how the kids will deal if I am gone more than 2 days. There's nothing more I can do to make sure they're OK, though. I just wish I knew what's going to happen over there in TX.

Uncertainty, it's a bitch.