So, I'm on the Weight Watchers. It's not that hard, actually: You just stay within your points value, exercise, and you're supposed to lose weight. Well, I'm staying within my points value, exercising 5-6 times a week, and I'm not losing weight. I'm getting pretty frustrated, because I believe that after an initial loss of five pounds I'm actually gaining it back. Increased frustration ensues.

Frustration with everything, actually. Can't lose weight, can't get a job, can't get all my ducks in a row to work on the novel. Can't finish this essay on, you guessed it, the politics of weight loss.

Can't resolve myself to this middle class life. Can't get over the nagging fact that this is not what I'm supposed to be doing right now. Can't get over the fact that I'm finally comfortable and safe.

That's what this malaise is, actually--it's too safe. I need danger, I need some conflict. I need adventure.

This need comes up every once in a while, and I feel the need to follow it but lately I never do. I'm always taking care of the kids, or trying to serve the muse on the writing, or need to get some sleep because I'm so tired after putting the kids to bed I can't even fold laundry, let alone get my brain working to figure out what to do.

So, naturally, I'm reading the Twilight series again. I'll admit it: I can't wait to see New Moon, but I'm going to have to wear a baseball hat and sunglasses in order to enter the theater. I'm doing this rather than stealing the car and driving to Oregon. I'm doing this rather than opening a credit card and flying to someplace exotic, like Bosnia or Japan or Lebanon. I'm reading some young adult books dripping with longing and despair so that I can escape how much damned work I'm stuck doing right now, with the kids being two and the house needing selling and the shootings in the neighborhood and my skin breaking out all the time and the laundry that never ends and the dog who is so old and so tired.

I'm reading the damned books because I want to be anywhere else but here, love for my family notwithstanding. My insides are screaming for an escape, and putting on an outside of calm and housewifely happiness is starting to eat at me, medicine notwithstanding. And I'm controlling my eating and exercise habits with an iron fist and not losing weight while going purely on faith in a system that's not working, love of butter and white pasta notwithstanding.

I'm tired, and hungry, and frustrated. I crack my back almost every time I move my shoulders. I listen to the radio for music to get me started and come up wanting. And I keep remembering the eternal laundry.

So maybe this post will help me get back on track. No matter what my impulses are, I need to resign myself to reality, the reality of ear infections and hand foot and mouth virus and clothes upon clothes upon clothes. I need to keep the facade of benign housewifeliness upon my face. I need to be an adult and exercise a little self control.

And who knows, maybe it will finally be enough. Until then, though, I'm going to have to wait over here, full of longing and something resembling despair, until everything finally clicks into place.