Touchstones

There's one in every family and my family is no exception. One person is the emotional stabilizer, the one who pulls rabbits out of their hat and keeps everything going, the one who listens to everyone and solves everyone else's problems or goes down trying. This is the person who has their nervous breakdowns in private so no one else freaks out. The person who everyone else feels secure enough with to totally unload on. One person is always the touchstone.

That person is me.

And right about now I'm going down.

Maybe I need a good nights sleep. Maybe I need the weather to drop below 150 degrees. Possibly I need a bottle of Chardonnay, a bowl of pesto (and a spoon) and every Hugh Grant film I can dig up. I might try it, with a few exceptions. First off I have no wine, so I'll substitute lemonade. There' s not a drop of pesto in the house so I'll swap for some gorgeous farmer's market tomatoes with a hunk of fresh mozzarella. There is no substitute for Hugh Grant, so that part gets left alone. It's a crucial part in my recovery and I'm not taking any chances.

Maybe I just need to have a minute to myself to sort things out. There's a lot going on...

The Film Geek's shoot is not going well. This is unsurprising for several reasons, but still a problem. The shoot got pushed back several weeks to accomodate an actor and in the process inconvenienced absolutely everyone else. The new semester started today, so he's trying to work fourteen hour days (on an open prairie in the heat) and somehow get his students up to speed at the same time. One of the guys on his crew is trying to undermine his position just to be a shit. Their schedule keeps changing, thanks to the same actor. The in town and location shooting just got flip flopped, so all the days I arranged to work while he had days off are now moot and I am without child care while he is out of town. Sasquatch has done a good job for me lately, but I'm just not confident of the dynamics of leaving an older dictatorial brother in charge for a twelve hour shift.

FG's exhausted, hot, feeling underappreciated and overworked. Feeling like he's only giving half of himself to each of the two jobs he's now trying to juggle. He takes his students very seriously, but this feature is a big deal professionally. If this goes well an even bigger project will follow. And we could really use the money. We don't call this house The Money Pit for nothing. His stress level is palpable and we are two weeks into a six week shoot. He feels like he can't breath and he says his chest hurts. Yesterday he just snapped and told me he was walking away from the film. This is a first. In twenty years the man has not ever walked away from a job, even when he should have. For an hour in the car on the way to the set he examined all the angles, all the reasons he should throw in the towel. I was driving him basically to be a good wife and also to give him a chance to vent. He ranted and raged and for one awful moment I thought he was going to cry. And then, I knew this was coming, he said, "What do you think I should do?"

Now we all know there is no right answer for this, so I pointed out the pros, cons and possible repercussions of each side of the fence. I never mentioned the words money or heart attack. I told him that ultimately he was the one who would have to live with his choice, so it stood to reason it shoud be his decision. As I dropped him off I crossed my fingers that he could live with whatever he decided. It was all I could really do.

Next up is Sasquatch who is having a semi-stressful entrance to High School. Believe me when I say that it could be worse, but it's still tricky. He can't sleep at night so the mornings are pure hell. He's disorganized and defiant about it, so something as simple as carrying a backpack becomes a power struggle. He simply cannot understand why I want him to have all of his stuff together and contained. Because he's so tired he's particularly short tempered, especially with me. I'm his safety zone, you see, the person who gets to experience all of his teenage glory. The homework level has really been kicked up as well, so he's feeling some pressure himself.

I was preoccupied with the Film Geek and wondering what the final outcome would be when Sasquatch came into the room to tell me that he had just realized that he had left tonight's homework at school. When I asked how that happened he got furious and accused me of "attacking" him. This is his favorite spiel. When I ask him a question I'm "attacking" him. When he goes balllistic on me he's "explaining" himself. Evidently there's a difference somehow. He raged at me that I never listen to a word he says and that he's tired of me always being "the victim". Then he slammed into his room.

Imagine a sitcom where when one character exits from one door another enters from the other side. Exit Sasquatch, enter Gumby, who has just realized that one of his pet rats has a lump on it's back. As I was walking into the room to look, I pointed out that this rat is over two years old and that we might need to keep that in mind. At that point he collapsed in tears and hysterically started making lists of all the things we needed to do to keep the rat alive. This list thing is evidently genetic.He had heard Sasquatch yelling at me, so he pulled himself together quickly so as not to upset me. This, of course, upset me more. Just because your brother is a teenage drama queen doesn't mean that your feelings aren't legitimate. I held him and he cried and then we plotted out Operation Rat Rescue. He went back into his room to try to go to sleep.

Cue sitcom timing. The phone rang and it was my husband telling me that he and the director had had a come to jesus talk and he was staying on the film. They basically told him to do whatever he needed to do about teaching and they would work around him. They told him they had his back. The guy giving him so much grief will be looking for a new job very shortly unless things change fast. He sounded calm. He sounded relieved. He sounded tired. Nothing hurt. He was on his way home for the night. And tomorrow he'd go back.

Every unpleasant day in my life has some surreal element in it, just a little drop kick to keep you awake. Mine was supplied by Surfer Dude, who had to appear in our little soap opera somehow. He's all fired up for this next Kid's Top Chef competition he's planning and keeps fiddling with things in the kitchen as he prepares. (This event is weeks away, BTW). Whenever I walked into my kitchen there was a pile of all different kinds of peppers and jars of spices artistically stacked up. Except the position kept changing. First it was on the table. Then it was piled on the counter. It made its final appearance on the island before I said if he didn't put the peppers away I would feed him nothing but Pop Tarts until he went away to college. Foodies evidently don't eat Pop Tarts, even ten year old foodies, because the pepper pastiche went away.

So I sat on the computer (writing this) and felt absolutely drained. I could really use just one day where people take their problems elsewhere. Let someone else be the touchstone for a change.Usually I call a friend and vent. Last night it was just me and the keyboard, practicing the ancient art of internet venting. Some might even call it whining. Hell, I might even call it whining. Still...

I'm feeling better. Maybe I don't need Hugh after all.

But why take chances?