Ahhhh.  A nice romantic Valentine’s Day. A crazy day at work where we practiced our “Just say no skills” (more on that later), a rushed drive on Virginia roads to get to preschool to pick up the girls, and my parents, for dinner; the aforementioned dinner complete with meltdowns and bad behavior from BOTH children; the mother, with no patience to spare for anyone or anything, and the father, who says things like “WHY do we do this again?  Is THIS supposed to be FUN???”  Nothing says good lovin’ like a night out with two wild children, your parents, bad chain restaurant food and a ton of family drama on top of it all. 

I did get a fabulous email from Mike with his top 10 list of reasons he loves me.  Most of them were true, at least. 

Speaking of Virginia roads, I have to risk the wrath of Virginians by pointing out that many of them just do not know how to drive.  Or at least, when I learned to drive, I was taught that the left lane was for passing.  In Virginia, the left lane is merely another lane, where people chat on their cell phone, go under the speed limit, or just weave in and out of the lane without using turn indicators. 

Forgive me, I’m a little cranky.

This week has not been stellar.  I was on a high a couple of days ago as Jennifer and I practiced saying no to the client I mentioned earlier, and then actually delivered the news to that client that we would no longer be working with them. Trouble is, they didn’t listen.  One of the things that disarms me the most is begging, or those people who just pretend they didn’t hear you and keep right on asking.  We are now going on Round 4 of saying no.  It will come in the form of an email, and I’m sure there will be some upset email back in Round 5 telling us how stupid and short sighted we are.  One thing I’ve learned (out of maybe 2 or 3 things total) is that going with my gut is the only way to go.  Every time I ignore my gut, I regret it mightily.  So, ding!  Round 5 begins. 

I can’t get into details about the other stuff that has happened because my parents asked me not to and so did my husband.  The fact that he’s a lawyer means that sometimes I have to keep my mouth shut about things, even though I like to pretend that I can lay it all on the line in my blog.  I really can’t.  I can say that a major family skeleton is not only out of the closet - that skeleton is marching around Richmond proper announcing itself to anyone who will listen.  It’s very traumatic for all of us right now and I don’t know how to deal with it.  I’m a strange and sickening combination of extremely angry, extremely upset, and extremely confused.  The situation has also given me a sort of F-You attitude towards everything, I think primarily because I have no room left in my brain to process other issues or problems.  I told Jennifer today that normally when I am stressed like this, I get very withdrawn and cold and bitchy.  Not so during Family Drama Extravaganza 2007!  I’m so beyond “stress” that I’m actually slap-happy. 

So, I’ve been silent.  As I’ve said before, I don’t really care for blogging when I can’t be open about what’s happening.  That’s pretty much how I am in life as well. It doesn’t help that I’ve had raging PMS and have been eating like a pig for a week either.  If someone tells me that I can’t “stuff” my emotions with food, I’m going to hit them with a chocolate croissant.  I get blog-stipation when I can’t be honest here - I get all crampy and angry and feel like I’m going to explode.  That’s why silence for me is deadly.  Apparently I just need the equivalent of a literary Ex-Lax.