this morning, scrubbing vomit from Oscar’s dismantled bed and diarrhea from the playmats downstairs, shaking out the day’s third load of innards-encrusted laundry before noon and sanitizing my chapped hands one more time to try to protect the howling Posey from her brother’s ongoing misery, i located my brain.

it’s been AWOL, lost in the buzz of sick kids and late-onset colic and seasonal sadness and the secret certainty that i am utterly useless, overwhelmed, depressed.  whatever you call it, it’s ugly.  it’s been a perfect shitstorm the past couple of weeks, all of a sudden, out of the blue…a swell of internal and external afflictions that coincided like Murphy’s Law personified.  and i’ve become like an old-school tv after the channels go off for the night…all snow, no picture.  blank.

when i found my brain this morning, it was rocking in a metaphorical corner, musing.  why do we use the word “uncle” to indicate surrender? it asked me, rather plaintively.  who’s Uncle? whose uncle? i shrugged, waved at it, happy to note that it was thinking about something, at least.  i told it i’d ask you guys.

who, tell me, friends, is this mythical uncle we can surrender to?

and will he pick up the pieces for me, do my laundry, help me pet one child to sleep without the other screaming like a banshee?  if i surrender, if i admit i’m failing here, will Uncle step into the breach?

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i am not sure why i’m even telling all this, except to get it out, to put it somewhere outside of me so it does not leak out at midnight when i’m trying to settle a baby who’s cried all evening long and suddenly find the tears pouring hot down my own face.  i am not as alone as i feel,  nor as bad as i sound.  but i am overwhelmed.   and the chiropractor hasn’t helped the colic, and Oscar’s sitter now has the flu, so for the seventh straight day here we all are, crying.