Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

Friday, October 07, 2005

On being a ghost in my own life

Do you ever have this weird feeling that you might not really be there? Okay, I don't either, but yesterday was one of those days where my attempts at interfacing with practically anything failed. I couldn't get on Blogger; then I couldn't get on the internet or get access to my email; then I couldn't get on a special dedicated server where I'm doing some work; then I couldn't reach a relative who always answers the phone; and then a grocery delivery I'd scheduled never showed up. Each of these failures had its root problem on the receiving side: Blogger was done (that's been happening a lot lately, too); my modem has always acted erratic; the dedicated server is going through huge problems at its end; etc. It was just the strange concentration of failures all on one day that made me feel ghostlike, as if my ghostly fingers were attempting to push buttons that would respond only to solid, real flesh. I'm hoping that today is a corporeal day, where all my efforts make meaningful contact. UPDATE: Anne, at PalmTree Pundit has identified something even more sinister than vanishing from your own life. She points to a child's unerring instinct to locate and interrupt a parent seizing a moment of rest. My children have the uncanny knack, not only of finding me no matter how hard I hide, but of knowing where everything is in the house, including things that they're not supposed to know about (such as those wine bottle openers we never use or old records for the record player we don't own). Even my husband can't find things the way they do. Of course, this spooky ability is more than offset by the fact that my children (and my husband) can't find the obvious: "Mom, where are my socks?" "Mom, where's my lunch?" "Mom, where's the milk?"