This week…I’m doing it and thriving! (and by “thriving” I mean “drowning!”)

I haven’t written one of these “week in review” posts in so long I barely remember how to do it. Seriously it’s been like three weeks. Somehow I think you all have survived, though I, for one, have missed it. Where the hell else am I going to record the trivial events of my life and share misguided, slightly ridiculous musings?
So first I think we should address the elephant in the room. Oh yeah, that’s the one, that post I wrote that “got big,” or at least for me. The “dying to live” post. Check it out: before I wrote that post my busiest blog day was 2,500 visits. The day after I wrote that post, 35,000 people came to the blog, and in the days that followed 250,000 more came. TRIP OUT. Let me just say “welcome” to the new people. Thank you for sticking around. We’re glad to have you.
The good news is that the post brought a lot of new readers, the bad news is that post brought a whole shit load of crazies who called me all sorts of names all over the internet and accused me of being all sorts of things, including but not limited to: melodramatic, anti-feminist, anti-gay/male/adoptive parent, a whiner, etc., and I was feeling all weird and violated for a minute, like “DUDE. I just wrote about a FEELING. How can a FEELING be attacked?” And I wanted to crawl back into my safe hole with you people. But then I remembered that only about 5% of the feedback was negative, and most of the people who read it were like “thanks for saying it,” and that made me feel like maybe I was of some use to some women, and that’s an amazing feeling.
But isn’t it weird how a huge percentage of feedback can be positive, and yet your mind focuses on the negative?! More proof that my brain is unreliable, and quite possibly out to destroy me.
In other news, pretty much my whole house smells funky. It’s sort of this weird aroma not totally unlike vomit, though not quite there. Ask me what I’m doing about it.
In the last two weeks, my kids have had rotating illnesses – colds, norovirus, ear infections, yay! – but never on the same fucking day. One gets sick, then better, then it moves to the next one. They can’t all be sick on the same day. THAT WOULD BE TOO EASY.
On April 13 I’m taking the comprehensive exam for my Master’s program. It’s no big deal, I just have to somehow pull from the recesses of my already struggling brain sufficient information to write 3 essays in 6 hours based on pretty much any text since the beginning of English literature.
Okay I’m exaggerating a little. There’s actually a 2-page, single-spaced reading list that I must know. But there’s British literature on it. I don’t know British literature. I ONLY DO AMERICA DAMN IT. Fuck Keats. [I don’t mean that. Please don’t send me to hell, literary gods. I’m just frustrated. It’s not you. It’s me.]
In short, people, I’m terrified. I can’t fail this exam.
On a completely unrelated, actually happy vein, the other positive fallout from the “big blog post” is that I may have a couple opportunities to write for some online magazines, which means you’ll have more places to read me! Try to contain your excitement. No really. Do it. Stop pole dancing. OR DON’T.
Anyway at the risk of sounding sentimental, I really want to tell you readers, old and new, how much I appreciate you. I started this blog a couple years ago because I felt like an outsider in the mothering world, and I thought I was this weird island of ineptitude. That feeling has not vanished, because DUH I STILL HAVE KIDS, but at least now I know there’s a whole crap load of mothers just like me – struggling and loving and getting pissed and trying really hard not to destroy the whole gig. You and your brilliant comments, every one of which I read (even if I don’t always have the time to respond), make this ridiculous feat of mothering way, WAY better, and I mean it. I know that if I could hang out with most of you, and it would be like we’ve been friends forever.