Constitution of a crisis
* broke. I'm sick. Again. It's not so much that there's nothing wrong with me as that there's nothing right with me. I woke up on Monday morning with one eye gummed shut and blood on my forehead. Nothing major, caused by a flu-like bug and increasingly aggressive eczema respectively, but it caused one of those moments where you look at yourself and wonder if life is about survival of the fittest, then where on earth do you fit? I took my body to the doctor and he told me to get over myself and rub some olive oil on my head. I asked for a new body but he didn't have any spares. Bastard, it's cruel to make me stick with this awful sack of meat. Tough flesh and soft bones. I wouldn't feed it to a dog.
* whined. As you can see from the above, I'm suffering from existential manflu, exacerbated by being a bit stir crazy after a few days at home (mostly alone). I keep trying to do stuff instead of lying down and being sick, but my brain is scrambled by germs so I end up frustrated AND ill. I really need a day spent under a duvet watching romantic comedies.
* analysed small chunks of text. I have my first assignment for this course due on Thursday and the most time-consuming part is the bit which doesn't actually carry any marks. I had to go through about 300 words of text and assign a word class to each individual word. Most of it's as easy as it sounds but the text were deliberately chosen to be as niggly as possible. Did you know that the word "there" is treated as a place adverb, except when it's in its existential form? More importantly, did you care?
* used the word 'existential' twice in a blog post. That's the kind of day it's been.
Special Joey pullout supplement. She deserves her own section today as she's both more interesting and more lucid than me. Recently Joey has...
* tended to Daddy in the morning. We had a very strange and tender experience on Sunday which was repeated on Monday morning. On Sunday, she accidentally broke open my lip (I've had a painful split lip for weeks now and it pops open at the slightest nudge). Joey ran into the bathroom, grabbed a tissue and gently dabbed off all the blood. Then she got my lip balm and rubbed it on the cut. Actually, she rubbed it everywhere but the cut and it was quite painful, but it's the thought that counts. On Monday, when I woke up one-eyed and bloody, she did the tissue thing again, again with great tenderness.
* taken great strides down the path of nerd-dom. She likes Star Wars now. Also, after a long chat about Doctor Who recently she has taken to referring to David Tennant as "Ten".
* discovered love. An average Joey sentence at the moment goes "Can I _________ because I love you?" She understands what "I love you" means. She really feels it. She also understands that it's a devastating phrase that gets you almost anything you want. She really will be fine when she's a grown-up.
* was outsmarted by daddy. Parenting is a tough gig. There's no other challenge in life where you have such an unpredictable and creative opponent who thinks of almost nothing except ways to trip you up. It's a constant battle of wits. Anyway, Joey's recent trick is to wake up four or five times a night and declare herself to be thirsty. I've given in each time, because you can't tell a child they have to stay thirsty. Today she tried it just before bedtime and I had a brainwave: I said she could have a drink, but only water. She hates water but now she can't complain about me giving her a drink, so she went to bed defeated. Daddy 1-0 Joey. Of course, she's thinking of ways round this right now and she will undoubtedly win the next round. Like I said, tough gig.
* whined. As you can see from the above, I'm suffering from existential manflu, exacerbated by being a bit stir crazy after a few days at home (mostly alone). I keep trying to do stuff instead of lying down and being sick, but my brain is scrambled by germs so I end up frustrated AND ill. I really need a day spent under a duvet watching romantic comedies.
* analysed small chunks of text. I have my first assignment for this course due on Thursday and the most time-consuming part is the bit which doesn't actually carry any marks. I had to go through about 300 words of text and assign a word class to each individual word. Most of it's as easy as it sounds but the text were deliberately chosen to be as niggly as possible. Did you know that the word "there" is treated as a place adverb, except when it's in its existential form? More importantly, did you care?
* used the word 'existential' twice in a blog post. That's the kind of day it's been.
Special Joey pullout supplement. She deserves her own section today as she's both more interesting and more lucid than me. Recently Joey has...
* tended to Daddy in the morning. We had a very strange and tender experience on Sunday which was repeated on Monday morning. On Sunday, she accidentally broke open my lip (I've had a painful split lip for weeks now and it pops open at the slightest nudge). Joey ran into the bathroom, grabbed a tissue and gently dabbed off all the blood. Then she got my lip balm and rubbed it on the cut. Actually, she rubbed it everywhere but the cut and it was quite painful, but it's the thought that counts. On Monday, when I woke up one-eyed and bloody, she did the tissue thing again, again with great tenderness.
* taken great strides down the path of nerd-dom. She likes Star Wars now. Also, after a long chat about Doctor Who recently she has taken to referring to David Tennant as "Ten".
* discovered love. An average Joey sentence at the moment goes "Can I _________ because I love you?" She understands what "I love you" means. She really feels it. She also understands that it's a devastating phrase that gets you almost anything you want. She really will be fine when she's a grown-up.
* was outsmarted by daddy. Parenting is a tough gig. There's no other challenge in life where you have such an unpredictable and creative opponent who thinks of almost nothing except ways to trip you up. It's a constant battle of wits. Anyway, Joey's recent trick is to wake up four or five times a night and declare herself to be thirsty. I've given in each time, because you can't tell a child they have to stay thirsty. Today she tried it just before bedtime and I had a brainwave: I said she could have a drink, but only water. She hates water but now she can't complain about me giving her a drink, so she went to bed defeated. Daddy 1-0 Joey. Of course, she's thinking of ways round this right now and she will undoubtedly win the next round. Like I said, tough gig.