Poison ivy, dog poop, deadlines, oy!

I've had worse weeks, for sure. But I'm in one of those time/space vectors right now where not a whole lot is going my way. In fact, someone observing from overhead -- say, hanging from the ceiling fan that's blowing down on me right now (because I haven't taken the time to stand on my kitchen island and switch the direction of the blades for summer -- did you know you're supposed to do that? have them suck the air up rather than blow it down?). I digress. Back to my whine.

The most amusing and annoying thing going on is that I have poison ivy... on my butt. Okay, more specifically in the, uh, crack of my butt. My son, who is 7 and thinks all things to do with butts are beyond hilarious, is beside himself. He will announce to anyone he can find, "MY MOM HAS POISON IVY ON HER BUTT!" It's been a week as of tomorrow, since the day I stupidly squatted to pee in the woods. And this morning I woke up itching in new places. Poison ivy is my enemy. It attacks me with a vengeance like nothing I've ever come up against. I should have succumbed the minute I noticed it, and run to the doctor for the steroids prescription. But in a classic example of the definition of insanity, I once again thought "oh, maybe this year it won't be so bad."

So then the other thing, which I don't have time to fully go to town whining about, is the sudden proliferation of dog poop. The day of my son's birthday party I ran around the backyard picking up the the poops of my two dogs, Lucy and Coco, along with the neighbor dog Finnegan (his are the larger piles). I do this with two plastic bags, one covering my hand like a glove. It is disgusting. I have a very sensitive gag reflex and pretty much go into dry heaves when I have to have this kind of close contact with giant masses of feces. So yesterday I came home to find poop in my downstairs play room, not sure which dog to blame. Then this morning I woke up to poop on the oriental rug in the living room.

All of this makes me feel particularly sorry for myself because I have this big magazine article deadline this week and I waited until the last minute, finally got a plan and started writing and then found out from the editor that I need a different approach entirely because there's something too similar already in that issue. That would be doable -- stressful but doable with 5 days to deadline -- IF I didn't have a full-time job and a son.

There's more -- the serious stuff that doesn't lend itself to joking -- that has me spending way more hours under the covers than anyone in my position should. Q and I keep asking (it's been a few years now??), "When's it going to get easier?"

That's the oy. That's why everything comes back to "just breathe." What else can we do?

(Next up, my nice friend Kerri-- www.sixuntilme.com --gave my blog an actual award! So, you are now reading an "award-winning" blog...)