Dithers

I'm waving my magicians cape all around me as the pyrotechnics display on my brain-stage explodes with sparks of red, white and blue. The music in the background blares "The Final Countdown" by Europe. The final countdown is 6 months.

Somewhere between episodes of "Arrested Development" and the toxic smell of the red paint I washed off the glass door the other day, my mind seems to have gotten cluttered. I've had recurring dreams before but never dreamed of picking up figurines off the floor, turning around and seeing Dora under the table again, staring at me with her creepy/cheery grin and her helmet-head hair. I had this dream 5 times last night!

There's a lot going on around here. The numbers speaking to me in my head won't quiet down so I'm going to write "the list" here in hopes that it will therapeutically sooth my angst and let folks feel sorry for me. They'll say "Poor Alice. At least she had a reason to be committed this time."
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1) Joel is interviewing. He's had several interviews here in Little Rock, one coming up this weekend in Bentonville, and had one in Las Colinas in the DFW metroplex.
2) Joel hasn't been offered a salary starting at $1,000,000 like I had secretly hoped. With my secret plan, we would have paid off his loans, our mortgage, adopted several babies from Ethiopia, taken our new family of 12 on a cruise to Alaska, and then Joel and I would have taken a couples retreat, just the two of us, to an all-inclusive resort on the French Riviera.
3) Joel has to register for state-specific peds/medicine boards by February. This means a decision DEADLINE!
4) Silas turned 4 in September. He will need some sort of K4 education if he's ever going to make it into Yale.
5) Micah turned 3 just 2 days ago. He needs to be potty trained if he's ever going to make it into Yale.
6) Liza will be 3 in 1 year and 11 months. If we're going to adopt a baby by the time she's 3, we've got to get some paperwork going stat.
7) Minty Maize Ruff Ruff needs to be spayed so we don't have to send 11 puppies with her to doggy school whenever we have the money for her to go.
8) Our children keep trying to ride Lewis. Lewis keeps biting our children. This is all one big problem.
9) Rice Krispies Treats are just too delicious for me to ever be able to lose weight for Garrett's wedding.
10) I got a new camera for Christmas and have been taking lots of pictures. But I forget to get the card reader out of the disaster room before Micah goes in there to take a nap every day. By the time he wakes up, I've forgotten about uploading pictures. I'm starting to feel a great deal of guilt about this.

OK, thanks for listening. See you for my next session in a couple days.