Whining. Nothing to see here.

• My dog peed on the floor last night; it's going to have to be replaced. (The flooring, not the dog.)
  
• My brother is cutting, and while I'm not too concerned about the actual behavior, I feel awful that he is so unhappy and has no other outlet.
  
• I'm back to utter misery about my work habits, and this lull we're in won't last forever; it's going to start mattering, very soon.
  
• I've barely seen Himself for the last month or more, because we are both gone all the time now, with his current work.
  
• Traffic ticket last week; I rolled a right turn at a light. Maybe I do need traffic school, because I had no idea you couldn't do that.
  
• My closest local friend is moving to L.A. in less than two months. (This town has an awful friend turnover rate).
  
• I put a small thing off again until it became a last minute panic. When will I learn?

I can only juggle, comfortably, three big things. Big things are like: work, love, family, friends, a hobby, my self-time, volunteer work, exercise. I know that this is pathetic and insupportable and besides I cannot choose, and so I try to juggle at least five or six, just like everyone else. It just seems like moments of approximate equilibrium are fewer and further between than they used to be, and possibly largely illusory. How the hell do people manage when they are parents?

And I know I've posted this poem before, as it is one of my very favorites and all-too-frequently applicable to my life, but I can't find it, so re-sharing:

You Want a Social Life, with Friends

You want a social life, with friends.
A passionate love life and as well
To work hard every day.  What's true
Is of these three you may have two
And two can pay you dividends
But never may have three.

There isn't time enough, my friends--
Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends--
To find the time to have love, work, and friends.
Michelangelo had feeling
For Vittoria and the Ceiling
But did he go to parties at day's end?

Homer nightly went to banquets
Wrote all day but had no lockets
Bright with pictures of his Girl.
I know one who loves and parties
And has done so since his thirties
But writes hardly anything at all.

— Kenneth Koch