Cracking Eggs (Metaphorically Speaking)

S. said that I seem like I’m on the verge of something these days. I replied, “yeah, a nervous breakdown”. Ah, the demons are swirling around me, and I cannot seem to write them away. Or knit them away, either, although I am quite enamored with the newest sock on my needles. How I do love to turn a heel. And then all this talk of babies…I declared this a worry-free year, and yet I can feel the anxiety of turning 38 from seven months away. Can’t wait to see what sort of shape I’m in come May.

Most days I think I’d have a really great kid. Other days, I’m afraid it might be deformed, severely autistic, or turn out to vote Republican. Let’s face it – with all the Diet Pepsi I’ve consumed over the years, chances are that whatever eggs are left are probably drowning in aspartame. It can’t be good.

Oddly, I don’t worry that I’d be a bad parent. I’m pretty convinced that all parents screw up, to one extent or another, and I’m sort of ok with that. Or, more to the point, even if I did screw up, I’m pretty sure it would be in an interesting sort of way. My mother always claimed that if I had a child I’d lose it, since I’m both messy and absent-minded about things. She forgets that she lost me once, in a rack of clothes in a department store that I thought it would be fun to hide inside. I turned up eventually.

I do cringe at the idea of sending my (imaginary) kid to school, though. I’m intensely curious about the unschool movement, which appears to be an ultra-liberal alternative to home schooling. I’m starting to think that traditional school is simply a construct to suit our economic structure, and particularly now with all of the emphasis on testing, it’s less about learning and more about mass workforce development.

In the meantime, it's turning colder and I must focus if I'm ever going to break out of this funk I'm in.