EDITED TO ADD: weird friends are fine if you’re weird in a good way.

With six weeks to go before Xanga Doomsday, it seems prudent to wait until July to make any decisions.

I can be imprudent.

Plus I’m tired because people keep throwing up in my house in the middle of the night and even though the youngest is nearly eight, none of them can seem to make it to a toilet.

It’s not that I don’t think fundraising is a perfectly legitimate activity, and it’s not even that I can’t see myself participating in fundraising efforts for good causes, and it’s definitely not that I don’t think Xanga could be a good cause, maybe.

It’s just that I don’t want to get into a whole weird credit card, personal information, pledge, WordPress thing with members of the Xanga Team who, as anonymous friends go, are even farther removed from my daily life than the newest assortment of new-to-me usernames who stop by my blog and comment on a regular basis.

Do I regret the money I paid for Premium so I could archive my posts and blog in peace during the remaining months or years I anticipated Xanga might stay alive? Not really. I have nine years and some months of posts on my laptop and I couldn’t have anticipated a free archive option. Nine years, a little money, it was worth it.

This is where I landed.

Earlier this evening I was talking on the phone to my dad who wants me to sue a giant pharmaceutical corporation for him because he is in a Medicare Circle of Hell. I’ve been on the phone for literally hours over the past few days trying to solve this insoluble problem.

I was just falling asleep at midnight when my daughter leapt out of my bed and said, “I need the bathroom,” and then threw up all over the bedroom rug.

I got her out of her clothes and into the bath (long hair) and the phone rang.

A death in the family.

Couldn’t sleep after that; had to get the carpet out from under the (heavy) king-sized bed and clean up the vomit and the kid and talk about the death in the family.

So to relax, I logged onto Xanga.

Where I found this. 

Okay.

I’m 44 years old and I just decorated my car with shoe polish…or the modern, 2013 equivalent of shoe polish (in bright, non-toxic colors!)…for the first time in my life.

Maybe by the time my daughter graduates from Podville Elementary 5th grade they’ll have a full-on Prom with gowns and up-dos and boob jobs.

What? It could happen.

It hurts, squeezing those little plastic imitation shoe polish bottles. I felt like I should rest between “6th Graders On Board” and “So Long, Podville E!” I didn’t rest, though. If I had rested, I wouldn’t have had time to dash back inside, soak up some air-conditioning and tell you all about how I’m spending my one precious adult life.

I’ve been wondering how I can play these ideas out in my next graduate school admission essay. Try, try again, they say. You didn’t think I’d given up?!

Truthfully I’m just not completely up to my usual strength after my illness last week. I was ill, people. And then my daughter, with the puking. It was like, “Bummer, Redux.” And when I say “redux,” I mean REDUX.

I’m so happy I volunteered to drive the boys TO the party so: a) I don’t have to stay; b) I don’t have to chaperone; and c) I don’t have to do anything else for the rest of the afternoon.

My husband’s 90 year old grandfather is close to passing away today. It’s a sad day. I suspect that means I’ll be traveling over the weekend, although it’s hard to say right now.

Why don’t they make those color shoe polish paint thingies in orange and purple?? What, only people who go to schools with primary color mascots use car paints? I think not. It’s not easy to mix those paints, either. I gave it the old college try, but you know, old dogs, new tricks….

We’re having leftovers tonight.

Today I struggled through a bike ride. I’m not up to my usual strength, I tell you. Then I wasted an hour at therapy. The therapist is starting to get on my nerves. Is that a normal part of therapy? Like, there’s this thing she does with her face when she’s affecting sympathy. It’s really bugging me. I want to say, “can you say that again, but with your regular face?” I don’t know. That seems mean. Maybe the sympathy isn’t affected. Maybe she genuinely feels it. If so, she should stop overdoing her facial expression.

Also, the dust-catchers sitting around in her office are beginning to lose their luster for me. They’re collecting a lot of dust. They’re tired. I’m tired of therapy. Good thing it’s summer.

After therapy I went to buy special car shoe polish paints at Michaels but they didn’t have any. She said, “we only carry those around graduation time.”

Me: “…”

I didn’t say anything mean to her. But I kinda wanted to. I went to CVS instead. No one in Podville thought of going to the CVS. It turns out later (I learned via text and FB) that CVS was one of the last remaining places near Podville where mothers of 5th graders could find special car shoe polish paints. And I got the last package.

It just goes to show, sometimes you have to think outside of the box. Or inside the Big Box. Or whatevs.

Last night I studied biology and astronomy for my (son’s) science final. Tonight I’m tackling energy and physics. Boy, I’ll be glad when I finally get out of school again, so I can concentrate on my writing and my grown up life.

But at least when I have a daughter-in-law I’ll know how to paint her car for the baby shower I’m sure I’ll be throwing for her.