I hope the dog works out, Cash. He's a little cutie.

I have spent 10 hours this week out among the humans. That's a quarter of a normal work week and I am totally exhausted. And I wasn't working, just being sociable! How do all you working people do it? And then also strip paint and take care of children and generally do things other than sleep. It's amazing.

Rhetorical question but I will presumably have to figure that out before too long and it is giving me a wiggins.

Stripping paint is solitary. And frankly, my week wore me the hell out. I'm relieved my weekend is only laundry, yardwork and manicure. And stripping. But I have no idea how the hell I am doing this. I haven't had a relaxed weekend in ages. Some is house, some is choices. And it is telling this month, I'm kinda fried at work.

I'm kind of ignoring all the stuff I've got coming in the month ahead. Trip to Indiana with the kids, trip to Michigan and a fundraiser dinner at the end of the month. Then derby try outs. If I think about it too much, I'll freak.

Right. Don't compare my insides to other people's outsides.

Love the derby article and picture, Cash. Y'all look very cool.

-t, I keep comparing myself now to a couple years ago, and I... whoa. I don't know how I've built all this STUFF into my schedule and make it happen. But I did. And it is exhausting, but clearly I am getting something from it. But given vacation schedules, I'm going to the market alone tomorrow, and instead of relishing it, I'm kinda feeling lonesome. Lonesome to get up and get moving on a weekend, wtf?!

I still don't know how parents do it, but I have some small glimpse: because you will it. And sacrifice other shit.

Sanity, mostly.

Heh. My mother would agree with you after having both grandsons (one 3) at the house...even with their dad there. She'll cope next summer.

That's kind of inspiring, sara.

I have additional thoughts but they are not co-operating with my efforts to wrangle them into sentences that make sense. Brain has gone to sleep, body soon to follow.

Okay, this is going back a million years, and is mostly still a reaction to Gudanov "Natter 65: Speed Limit Enforced by Aircraft" May 2, 2010 8:01:11 pm PDT where Gud says he only has four scars. 8 years ago, I posted this:

Entry Word: scar Function: verb Text: to mark with a scar <burns that had scarred her face> Synonyms cicatrize, scarify
Related Word cut, score, scratch; blemish, disfigure, flaw, mar; damage, deface

Main Entry: scar tissue Function: noun Date: 1875 : the connective tissue forming a scar and composed chiefly of fibroblasts in recent scars and largely of dense collagenous fibers in old scars

I don't understand the Neosporin ads. Sure, I get the antibiotic use, but are scars that scary that they can sell it on cosmetic grounds? My scars are a map to my memories. Places and people are attached to the events. Post it notes, scribblies of my life, written on my skin. They happen. And with me, they stay.

If I start from the top, I start at the beginning. Tip of the forehead, edge of the forceps, and welcome to the world, young lady. Family rumour has it that my mother refused to pay the hospital bill. Thirty-six hours of labour, and still on the lookout for a bargain. I think my sister was half price.

I never had a shot at undamaged. Start as you mean to continue, and all that.

I have a fascination with forehead scars. My sister was similarly marked, on a similar schedule. Daniel's was a tooth, embedded during a football match. He gets points for sheer grossness, and for pathos -- everyone was paying attention to the kid with the broken tooth. And Ron, Ron -- glass table, I think. At least my sister and I don't have to remember them.

I travel down my face, to the scars I've wanted but never had. You remember those pirates of childhood fancy, or those soap opera crazies? One of those scars, rakishly running over the eye socket, but in my (imagination's) case leaving my eye miraculously untouched. Or maybe something more understated -- slicing the eyebrow. Like Molly's. Except without the getting-hit-by-a-car bit.

Back a bit, to the ears. Here we find the first evidence of self-mutilation. But I didn't start it without prompting. The first holes, one closed hole on each lobe, were put there by my mother. I rejected all things femme (shortly after discovering how much work it was to change earrings) at around age 10. But that had already given me 6 or so good years of earring wearing - I don't think my sister was speaking yet when our mother took us in for piercing.

I rejoined the wonderful world of "real" earrings in high school. By the time I left England, I think there were three holes. Two more in Canada, and then two more in Michigan - tracing up from the lobe of my left ear to the cartilage.

My examination doesn't reach another scar until my chin. And it's a bonanza under there.

I don't know which is which, so I'll move chronologically. I was no more than four. He was my best friend. Throw in a brick fireplace, a wooden wheeled giraffe, and me needing to impress the other gender with feats of physical prowess, and there you have it. Me, a toddler, being rushed to the nearest emergency room to have 6 stitches put in. I don't know if it worked. To impress him, I mean. It must have, a little. Since I still seem to think it's a valid methodology. Wait ... no ... still single. Hrrm.

Parallel to that scar run another six stitches. Product of the curved lip of the Senior Common Room swimming pool, and a goofing little sister. I was 8 or 9, old enough to remember adult reaction this time. My mother, swooping me up from where I'd fallen, blood mixing with chlorinated water, and rushing me across campus to the hospital.

The rumours about my injury arrived at school before I did. I think I disappointed them, unable to spin a mesmerizing tale of injury, pain or bravery. It was mostly like the first time -- my memory doesn't distinguish between the (continued...)