The Numbers Racket

I should preface things by saying I’m a bit OCD.  While a normal person calls AAA when they go outside in the morning to find their car won’t start, me? I’d have to call Suicide Prevention.

Now that I’ve gotten that bit of info out of the way, I’ll discuss my hatred of numbers & how they’re ruining the quality of my life.

Have you ever noticed how enslaved we are to these little characters that seem to rule our lives? I’m talking about numbers.  They seem innocent enough….1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 & 9…..what’s the big deal?

Here’s the big deal, the way I see it….and it all begins with the Clock.

I have to get up at 5:45 every morning to get ready for work. I have to leave the house no later than 7:50 if I am to arrive at my job on time.  In order to wake up rested, I have to be in bed no later than 11:15 every night, otherwise I’m pretty useless at 5:45.

I get off work at 5:00 every day, but if I don’t leave by 4:55, I’ll face horrendous traffic which will extend my commute by 25 minutes.  Leave 5 minutes early to avoid 25, and sneak out of the office like a thief in the night to boot.

The speed limit on the highway is 65.  If I drive 75 mph, I will get a ticket for $150 & up to 5 points on my license if I’m speeding in a construction zone.

See how the number 5 comes into play here? The number 5 is hazardous to one’s peace of mind,  can you see that?

About 3 years ago, I went on a diet & managed to drop ninety-something pounds. I say ‘ninety-something’ because I’m not sure what the exact number really is.  Why? Because there is no such thing as an accurate bathroom scale.

My weight is a source of obsessive/compulsive behavior like nothing else on earth, & the number displayed on the scale at any given time promises to send me to the loony bin one day.  For 2 ½ years, I relied on a digital scale I’d had for years & I trusted it….inasmuch as a person can trust a scale.  One day about 6 months ago, when I stood on it naked as a jaybird, it refused to turn on.  Holy mother of God, The Scale Was Broken!

I was panic stricken. What now? I called my daughter on her cell phone right away since she was shopping at Target.  “Sarah,” I said with more than a hint of desperation in my quivering voice, “please pick me up a scale & hurry!”  She came home with a Weight Watchers digital scale & I tore open the box, put it down on the floor, ripped my clothes back off, and stood on it.

The number staring back at me read 67 pounds.

What?

Hmmmm. Maybe my diet was working even better than I thought it was…..

No way. Something was wrong, obviously.  I asked my husband to stand on the dadgummed thing.  His number was 158.  In reality, the man weighs in excess of 205 lbs.

Now this was a good scale! A liar, of course, but still a beautiful thing….

In the end, the Weight Watchers scale went to live under the bed because, no matter what I did, the readings fluctuated wildly. Not accurate and a liar.

How does a person judge a ‘good scale’? Well, she stands on every scale in the store & selects the one that weighs her the lightest, how else?

I picked up another digital scale at a garage sale for $4 one day & it has been quite cooperative. If I stood on it 3 times, it weighed me the same each time. Phew. Finally, a reliable, trustworthy & accurate scale to rely on! What a relief.

Yesterday, I stood on the piece of junk 6 times & each time, I saw a different number displayed on the screen.  I weighed myself with Ruby the fat dachshund in my arms in an attempt to ‘reset’ the thing since it was obviously off kilter.  When I got back on it, I saw yet another number staring back at me.

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I have no idea how much I weigh now & this is bringing my OCD tendencies to all new heights.  I’ve been trying awfully hard to reach the 100 lb weight loss mark & see the number 125 staring back at me, for once in my life, so I could crow a little, since I started my journey at 225 lbs. & wore a size 2X. Instead, I saw every number from 125.8 to 128.2.  So here’s where the number 2 defeats me.

Sigh.

Let’s talk about the number 4 for a moment, shall we?  Starting out in size 2X clothing, I slowly watched myself fitting into smaller sizes, a little at a time.  When I finally found myself wearing a size 6, I was thrilled beyond belief.

I’m a woman, after all, and predictably obsessed with size numbers since I’ve been trained to view stick-figures as attractive, thanks to all the magazine hype about what constitutes ‘beauty’ in our culture.  One day, just for giggles, I tried on a size 4 pair of slacks. Much to my shocked delight, they fit! And I didn’t even have to lie down on my bed & wrestle them on while sucking in my breath!

Did it matter that this pair of slacks was construction cone neon-orange? Nope, not one tiny bit! They fit, and that’s all I cared about at the time. Size 4 fit!

Nowadays, when my eye is drawn to that shockingly horrible color glaring out at me from my closet, I wonder what on earth I was thinking when I shelled out $2 for them at a garage sale?  Silly me, my usual budget is $1 so I overpaid for something I would never even wear, just because it had a size 4 tag on the waistband.  Tsk tsk, looks like I am a slave to numbers, doesn’t it?

Whoever said Size Is Not Important didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. Give. Me. A. Break. Size isn’t only Important, size is Everything! Like they say, a woman can never be too rich or too thin. And, judging by my bank account, the ‘too rich’ tag isn’t likely to fit me. But size 2? Let’s go for it!

Speaking of sizes, let’s examine the number 6.  Normally, I wear a size 7 shoe.  But sometimes while shopping, the only size available on Clearance is 6. So then, a decision must be made.

Do I sacrifice fit & comfort for style and price? Notice I capitalized the word Clearance because in my world, Clearance is King.

Decisions Decisions.

I stuff my feet into said size 6 cute shoes & shock of shocks, they fit!  Does it matter that my feet look like 2 pounds of sausage in a 1 pound bag? What’s the difference if I need a shoe-horn to force my lil’ piggies into a pair of sandals?

No difference at all.  What matters is the 2 “C”s ……Clearance & Cute.

No matter that I hobble around all day & develop calluses at lightening speed……I can always use my Ped-Egg to grate those suckers off my feet later on, right? I bought 5 of them from EBay since my feet are in constant need of attention, thanks to my cute-shoe fetish.

The size 6 shoes are cute, cheap & stylish so they are in.

Yep, the quality of my life has been diminished thanks to the numbers racket.

By the time I compute the numbers for my cholesterol, triglicrydes, BMI, calorie budget, glucose, savings account, checking account, investment account, college fund account, vacation & sick time account, timesheets, taxes, Master Card bill, monthly mortgage payments, escrow balance, HOA fees and insurance premiums, my brain has turned to mush & I have little remaining gray matter left over for my full-time job as an Accounting Technician.

The Numbers Racket all begins & ends with the Clock, but what’s in the middle is no joy ride either.  If you don’t believe me, just try watching the stock market  these days.  Now there is a racket.  As if I don’t have enough aggravation as it is, I now get to watch the family nest egg rise & fall on an hourly basis from my Smarter-Than-Me phone, which I can’t manage to keep in the Off mode for more than 5 minutes. I might miss something, right?

Oops.........now it's 7:55 and I'm 5 minutes late leaving the house for work.  And you know what THAT means.  Yep, another day stuck in the numbers racket.

Sigh.

The Devil’s In The Details

As much as I hate computers, I’ve developed a need to own one myself, unfortunately. I once thought I couldn’t live without my IBM Selectric typewriter, but nowadays, I question how I managed without Word, copy & paste, the delete button, and the general ease & convenience of not having to use Liquid Paper or correction tape.

I have no knowledge of software programs or, heaven forbid, how to fix a computer………I’m completely in the dark about the inner workings of the blasted thing, so I rely on others to do that for me.  Mainly, I’ve relied on my 26 year old computer-wizard son to be my repairman.

He’s always been obsessed with computers, and I bought him his first desktop model when he was 7 years old. While his little friends were playing with Transformers & Lego’s, my son was tinkering around with a Phillips head screwdriver, jabbing the insides of a motherboard.

Over the years, he’s become quite the expert with electronics in general, and he’s wired my house to look like what I imagine the NASA control center to look like.

Sigh.

When the cable company came out to install some new wiring, the poor serviceman, who’d been in the business for 25 years, had NO idea WHAT he was looking at in my furnace room.  The furnace room is the epicenter of the wiring nightmare that my dear son has created to ‘help’ me get plugged in to the 21st century.

Have I mentioned how old-fashioned and based in the 20th century I really AM?

So, a few months ago, I finally broke down & agreed to buy myself a new desktop; it was TIME.  The outdated model I had been using  just wasn’t cutting the mustard anymore.  Naturally, my son Jon commandeered the entire purchase, insisting I buy a Lenovo  PC instead of some standard model that I would actually be ABLE to operate. Why do things simply & conveniently when you have a 26 year old expert to guide you to financial AND mental ruination?

When the new Lenovo arrived, Jon came by to install it & explain how it worked to his less-than-savvy mother. That would be me.  The model I purchased, as it turns out, is more like a laptop with a stand- alone monitor, in that the keyboard & mouse are wireless & tiny………nothing at all like the standard keyboard I’m used to typing on.  So Jon disconnected both the keyboard & mouse & set me up with my old stand-by’s.  Phew……….another catastrophe averted, yayyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!

Right after he installed my new computer, my son moved away to another state. Holy Mother of God, now we’d have to fix our OWN computers!  And, we’d have to figure it all out ALONE, and dig through a maze of wires that no human being was qualified to DO!  How much would I be shelling out the Geek Squad, I wondered?

About 6 weeks later, the keyboard started acting odd……..in the middle of typing a blog, suddenly, the letters EM kept appearing, out of nowhere, and screwing up my attempts to create English sentences.  This wasn’t happening constantly, but frequently enough to irritate me & cramp my 100 word-per-minute typing skills.

My husband Chuck looked things over & saw nothing glaringly amiss. He tried restoring Windows back to when we’d gotten the computer, hoping that would fix the problem.  It didn’t.  EMs were still popping up randomly in most of my sentences.

Must be the keyboard itself, we determined, and set off for Micro-Center to buy a new one.  Ever been INSIDE of a Micro-Center? UGHHHHHHHH, what a confusing mess it is in there.  Finally, I decided on a $5 model because hey, they are pretty much ALL the same so why spend a fortune when you don’t really HAVE to?

The new keyboard worked a charm & the EM keys, which were obviously stuck, no longer interfered with my work.

Until last week, when the WS keys ran amok.

WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS   

What? Here I am with a brand NEW keyboard, and now 2 MORE keys are stuck??  And boy oh boy, were these keys ever stuck………..WS was running RIOT constantly, preventing me from getting ANYTHING accomplished.  Dear Chuck said, “See, I TOLD YOU SO, buying a PIECE OF JUNK $5 keyboard is NEVER a good idea.”

Smugness is never an attractive feature in a mate, is it?

I told him, “No way it’s the keyboard………..junk or not junk, I don’t believe TWO keyboards are defective……something ELSE is at work here.  Gremlins, perhaps? Or maybe it’s THE DEVIL himself!”

So, with Chuck insisting it WAS the keyboard, and with me insisting it was NOT the keyboard, I trudged back out to the store & purchased yet ANOTHER keyboard.  This one is a $12 model because hey, maybe it WAS the $5 hunk-o-junk after all, who knows?

I unplugged the junko & plugged in the higher priced keyboard and held my breath as I looked at the screen…………and………………

WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS WSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWS   

was staring back at me! And that damn cursor was moving at super high speed, right down the screen, spewing out WS’s faster than the speed of sound.

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

“I TOLD YOU SO,” I screamed at Chuck, “I freaking TOLD YOU it was NOT the keyboard!!”

He looked rather sheepish because he had NO other choice but to agree with me.

*Apparently, smugness is WAY more attractive in a wife than it is in a husband………..*

I called Lenovo  technical support & spent the next hour & 45 minutes discussing with the rep everything that WASN’T the problem.  He finally gave up, admitted defeat, saying he had NO IDEA why on EARTH my computer was  shouting WS.  “Send the entire system back to us,” he suggested, since it was still under warranty. By the grace of God, we still had the original box in the garage as well. See? Sometimes hoarding isn't such a bad thing after all!

Chuck was ordered to find the original keyboard & mouse at that point.  He looked everywhere and finally found it……………..under his stack of books on CD……………

Which were pressing down on two keys of that keyboard…………

The W & the S ………………….

When my dear sainted husband restored Windows back to the July date of its arrival in our home, it obviously restored the  original KEYBOARD back to the ON position once again.

I downloaded divorce papers from Documents.com but I haven’t filled them out.

Yet.

Who Was the LIAR That Said Motherhood is Fun?

The way I see it, post-partum depression is grossly misrepresented.  My youngest is 18 & I’m just now starting to see an improvement with mine.

As a first time mother back in 1985, I was quite unprepared for the reality of an infant invasion.  When my best friend from childhood gave birth to her first child 6 months earlier, she called me up to tell me she was certain she saw three 6’s on the back of little Joey’s head.

At the time, I didn’t understand.   Although, a mere 6 months later, I would begin to understand.  Intimately.

My son was born at 7:15 pm after a gruesome 7 ½ hour ‘natural’ childbirth ordeal. I didn’t want natural childbirth…….but I was forced into it since the anesthesiologist was otherwise occupied with an emergency open-heart surgery patient.  As if I cared about someone else’s predicament when I was writhing in such a painful predicament myself, trying to force a watermelon out of the head of a pin?

As it turned out, childbirth was the easy part.

The very moment my son arrived home, he started screaming bloody murder & didn’t stop for a full 9 months.  One day, I remember limping into the pediatrician’s office for the bazillionth time, wearing bedroom slippers, hair standing straight up on end, and issuing him an ultimatum: drugs for the baby or drugs for me.

If you don’t know about colic, God bless you, you’re one of the lucky ones.  Colic is the catch-phrase for the baby who screams 24/7, refuses to eat, has enough gas to power a Sherman tank, and doesn’t spit-up, but projectile vomits.

For these infants, there are no cute little Baby Books designed to be read by a contented mom while her baby sleeps peacefully, blowing sweet little bubbles out of his pink, rose-bud mouth.  I know this for a fact, you see, because I had every baby book ever written, from Dr. Spock to Dr. Kevorkian, recommending everything from ‘tough love’ to whiskey soaked cotton balls to rub on baby-dearest’s gums.  (Mommy takes three sips of the whiskey, baby gets one) Every one of my how-to books was dog eared & stained with one of the 14 formulas I’d tried, unsuccessfully, to get my son to hold down.

“Little Jon is just hyper-active,” the elderly pediatrician informed me, on one of the many well-child visits every mother is familiar with.  “JUST hyperactive?” I would repeat, in a dead tone of voice, after being sleep-deprived for months on end.

So I’d go home & construct mobiles for little Jon’s amusement.  I had everything from kitchen forks to rubber duckies hanging from strings on coat hangers; and still, little Jon screamed on.  The only thing that calmed him down was if I jogged with him in my arms, pointing out all the items in the house as I wore a hole in the carpet from going back & forth, back & forth, back & forth all day long.  “Photograph, clock, stove, table, book, chandelier, plant, spoon, refrigerator, bed, chair……….I would repeat the words in a hollow tone while Jon pointed his tiny finger upward & grunted.  The moment I’d stop, he’d start screaming. 

And so it went for 9 long, miserable, mind-numbing months until I’d reached the point of physical & mental exhaustion.  One would think I’d be thin as a rail in those days, what with all the jogging I did.  But no, that wasn’t the case at all. I was stress eating……….Haagen Dasz to be exact, and lots of stress called for lots of Haagen Dasz…………rum raisin or vanilla swiss almond to be exact.

I’d look longingly and jealously at other mother’s with their sweet little baby’s riding peacefully in a stroller while my son was writhing, twisting, screaming & spitting up left & right.  What was I doing wrong? Why me?

I joined a Mommy & Me play group for about 20 minutes. Once the other moms got a dose of little Jon going berserk, they looked at me pityingly…….tsk tsk, poor, poor woman I wonder what she is doing wrong??

So I went back into the house & stayed in my nightgown for the next 6 months until I reached my breaking point.  By that time, I’d tried everything to get him to hold down food; I steamed the wallpaper off of the kitchen walls, I’d boiled just THAT many bottles.  I tried disposable plastic inserts, 47 different nipple shapes & sizes, there wasn’t ONE single stone I’d left unturned in my efforts. But nothing worked. Little Jon was SO opposed to sucking, he’d even refused a pacifier!  Holy cow, I needed help right away!

So I decided to bring him to a local Children’s Hospital for evaluation one day. I figured it like this: either tell me what I’M doing wrong or tell me what’s wrong with HIM. One way or another, though, the madness HAD to end. The experts watched the family interact on camera for 2 hours, during which time little Jon yanked my beads clear off of my neck & round discs were flying everywhere.  There was a ‘feeding’ during that time as well, where he screamed & spit up & did everything BUT consume the contents of his bottle. Sheer bedlam ensued, as usual.

“First let us tell you that your son is perfectly normal,” the experts came in to tell me when the freak show was finally over.  “Your baby is known as a Mommy Killer in medical terms.”  Great Almighty God, was he now going to stab me with a knife while I was sleeping??  A mommy killer?

The doctors patiently explained to me that a mommy killer was an exceptionally difficult infant. Gee, really? WHO KNEW?

Hellloooooooooooooooooooo? I TOOK this baby in to SEE you precisely BECAUSE he is so exceptionally DIFFICULT….so, thank you but……..I KNOW THAT.

“Well, little Jon is over-stimulated,” they informed me.

“OVER FREAKING STIMULATED?” I shrieked.

All those rotten-ever-changing-mobiles were ‘too much’ for the poor infant to process.  All the pointing out of various household items & speaking the words out loud was OVER STIMULATING the devil-child!

OK folks, drugs for HIM or drugs for ME, which shall it be?

The experts advised me to do a few things differently; first of all, they told me, take all the ‘stimuli’ out of his room & feed him in the dark.  Then, go out and get a job.

A JOB? I barely have time to brush my teeth every morning before the scream-fest takes off, how can I WORK?

“Get away from him……get out of the house for at least 4 hours a day,” they told me.  “No human being should be suffering like this.”

Ah, blessed validation! Finally! It WASN’T “me”, it was “HIM”!!!!! HE was the child with the 666 mark on the back of his head. And he even had some fairly pointed ears if I recall….

Finally though, little Jon did calm down.  At two years old, he was only occasionally throwing temper fits on the floor of the local grocery store.  Holding his breath till he turned purple & pounding his chubby little fists on the floor in front of the candy section.  He wanted some can-ddddd-eeeeeeeeeeeee NOW.  I would just ignore him, much to the other mothers’ horror, while he had his little fit of pique.  I’d ask him to let me know when he was finished carrying on so I could pop out my super-hi-level-noise-muffling earplugs.  Oh, I learned how to deal with all the histrionics after a while, trust me.

I was born to be a one-time-only mom, apparently, since I decided to NEVER have another child again. One was more than enough……one was an enormous handful, in fact, and one was ALL I’d EVER have, period. With God as my witness,  NO. MORE. KIDS.

Sarah Joy was born in 1993 at 6 lbs 14 ounces and measuring 19.75 inches long.

Sigh.

I’m relieved to tell you that Sarah was a delightful infant in every way, the polar opposite, in fact, of my first-born.

Nowadays, of course, the tables have turned. Because, at 54, I obviously haven’t been through enough yet.

Sarah, the freshman college student, is my drama queen extraordinaire, and never gives me one moment of blessed peace or silence. She’s making UP for all those years of good behavior & cheerful, wide-eyed smiles by driving me absolutely crazy 24/7.

Little Jon, who’s now turned into Big Jon, is a college graduate with a straight A average, working as a high level businessman while preparing to apply to Medical School.  He is every mother’s dream come true. NOW I can say that, ironically enough…..

The way I see it, he’ll be taking me on an all-expense paid cruise around the world when he gets his M.D…….as a small token of his appreciation for all the sacrifices I’ve made for him as a mother, and for all the pain & anguish he’s put me through over the years. ((((((Batting eyes & mopping brow))))))))

I can honestly say it’s been a wild ride with both of my kids. But I wouldn’t trade ONE single moment of it for all the tea in China.

Well, maybe just a few……….

Being Superwoman in the 21st Century: When Mrs.Became Ms.

Sometime after Women’s Lib was kind enough to reinvent us & redefine our purpose in life, we decided it was necessary to become Super-Women.  It would no longer be enough to cook, clean, do laundry, grocery shop, pop out babies (using only natural LaMaze techniques, of course) then carpool them around all day long, become  Girl Scout leaders & peddle cookies at the same time,  we deemed ourselves capable of even more.

 Now we were Equal. We were about to learn, however, that Equal meant Overworked and Exhausted.

We couldn’t stop our quest for Equality until we turned ourselves into Super-Women.  Nobody could tell us we couldn’t.  We could work a full time job, then come home & bathe the kids while the home-made dinner was simmering on the stove, then run out & mow the lawn after loading the dishwasher, sort through 67 mis-matched socks while vacuuming & talking on the phone, organize a fundraiser for the Hairless Cat society, and prepare a counter-argument  in Word for tomorrow’s murder trial.  When we turned the lights out at 2:30 in the morning, it wasn’t until the checkbook was balanced, the bills were stamped & ready to mail, and the guest list for Hubby’s 40th surprise birthday party was written out.

3 ½ hours later, the alarm clock rang & we had to get up and do it again. Amen; do it again.

Drive the kids to school after pulling chewing gum out of little Susie’s French braid she begged for this morning. Check. Fill the car with self-serve gas, drive-through Starbucks for an extra-grande Mocha Latte with skim milk & Splenda, of course, and don’t forget to charge the cell phone in the cigarette lighter while E-texting the prosecuting attorney that Superwoman is on her way.  As the IPod hits the car seat, it runs her pantyhose, requiring another quick stop at Wal-Mart……no time right now for Victoria’s Secret, tsk tsk.

Lunch will have to be a high protein bar because there’s no time for a proper meal.  In the land of Super Woman, she runs herself ragged to the point of collapse.  But she does take 114 different vitamins & natural supplements to replace everything she’s draining out of her poor body every day by doing too much, too often, and for too many.

But still there is more she ought to be able to do! There’s Mommy-And-Me classes at the local Y, circuit training at the gym, baking for the annual church sale tonight, helping Tommy with his 3rd grade math homework which looks to her like ancient hieroglyphics,  and the book club meeting to discuss a Meaningful, Non-Fluff piece of fine literature, naturally.  And let’s not forget the 5:30 pm appointment at the dentist for that abscessed tooth she thought wouldn’t swell her face up to the size of a cantaloupe.  Nope. Can’t put that off again. Thank goodness for laughing gas……at least she’d be in La-La-land for a while and that was something to bring her mania down a notch, right?

Uh oh.  Tonight is Thursday which means hubby-dearest is expecting his usual ‘back-rub’ & hoping it leads to something a little more meaningful later. Wink-wink.

Is it too late to shoot Gloria Steinem, I wonder?

How is it we were so ‘oppressed’ before Women’s Lib opened our eyes, I wonder? This liberated-and-Equal Super Woman longs for the days when a wife was expected to hang laundry on the clothesline using real wooden clothespins because she didn’t have the luxury of a dryer.  The simpler times, when the TV had 5 channels, all needing to be changed by hand….GASP.  The good old days when the most pressing thing on her mind was whether to watch My Favorite Martian re-runs or The Honeymooners to see what cleverly snide remark Alice would be making to her bus driving husband? Or how aggravated Norton would make Ralphie-boy this evening?

Yep, life sure did get complicated when Mrs. shortened her name to Ms.   When she traded her housewife status & leisurely-but-boring annual vacation in the Poconos for a 2 hour time-out in an oxygen bar, after a rushed high-colonic  in the health spa while Madam Elsa worked to squeeze out some stubborn blackheads on her carefully made-up face.

Then Versus NOW:  From  Suffrage to Suffer-age?

Sigh.

I’ll have to cut this story short, I’m afraid, since it’s now 5:00 & time for me to buck the rush-hour traffic for my 22.5 mile commute home, where the second half of my day will promptly begin.  But hey, I can do it……I am, after all,

Superwoman.