Today is another one of those "first day(s) of the rest of my life" where I am hands down swearing to start writing and keep writing and see if maybe - just maybe - I've still got something. If not talent, then at least a little left over shiny bit of dream to one day BE a writer. Ugh. Soft heart. Tired mind. Having gone from delirious crush to Stepford Wife to instantaneous-conceived-on-wedding-night MOM, I seem to have traded in my pen somewhere along the line for a shot of espresso and a wet wipe. The obnoxious thing is that it really eemed like a fair enough trade at the time.

Having stumbled across some old essays from graduate school, I had to ask myself - who the hell wrote this stuff or, better yet - what was I on when I wrote it? I know the answers to both those questions and feel it is almost critical that I inadvertently give the answers because every part of me that is now toeing the fine line of civil parenthood wants to pretend I am not the one who was who she was - EVER. My hair is brushed now. Fresh lip gloss. Matching shoes. The Bolinas-based Bohemian binger just some out-dated memory of someone else.

I dropped my boys off at the first day of school today and almost cried because I could not find the first grade room for my older son. I'd made the mistake of asking some dad standing there which room this was - while standing right in front of the appropriate classroom) and he said the name of some other teacher- who incidentally is NOT EVEN A TEACHER at that school - so I went around to every single other class, dragging my little homebody-Cancerian who really likes the predictability of things - until the principal asked him where he was going. FRUCK! And we were there an half hour early to make sure non of this stuff happened. He was then the last kid into the classroom just standing around while all the other kids sat at their desks and the teacher blocked the door with smiles and courtesies to keep us out. "Help him find his damn seat!!!!!" I wanted to yell, fake smiling into her inquisitive and somewhat already annoyed eyes. "He doesn't know where to sit" I pointed out, with probably much to much enthusiasm for the late girl- "Oh" she smiled back, as if that just finalized things. I hated to see him standing there - wondering where what when how - hanging my own BS on him like a "look at me I am a freak" blue tarp. If the boys survive my akward love and fear of humanity, they will be heros.

This is my silent crippling. The wanting to do things so correctly and the simultaneous need to make a joke about how inept at correct action I really am. Hating the idea of the white picket fence, I spiral into a deluge of self-deprecating commentary until whatever ear-owning hostage I have taken, slips politely out of my verbal grasps into the sea of parents so comfortably chatting about.

Being the sore thumb is tough. Knowing that I am not the only one is even tougher. Makes me feel like a self-centered narcissist during the times I am most certainly supposed to be turned outward. Like now. Two little boys fumbling their way through day one at a new school. A dog wearing a cone around her head because she wont stop chewing holes into her skin. A new pet rat that I think secretly snorts meth when we are not looking. Everyone, including the dog, just getting over the flu.

All of this is the madness that I use to excuse my rusty fingers. The keyboard; sadly just a tool to two-finger-type short emails and busy nonsense. All my connections knowing me as mother, colleague, friend; the anonymous writer in me dumpster-diving down behind the school, hoping not to get caught.