Toast! Toooooast!

My two-year-old Faery said this today, tears pouring down her little cheeks, as I stole a piece of toast from her untouched plate.

She wasn't eating the toast, you see, the toast I lovingly made for her. Oh no. But she sure didn't want the likes of me stealing it from her abandoned plate while she tried to open the closet door and get out the feather duster to play with.

In her defense, she's getting a cold and is crazily emotional--just like I get before an illness. Yesterday Princess started crying because I wouldn't let her go play next door (she hadn't been invited) and Faery not only strted crying too, but looked accusingly at me, pointed at Princess, and said "Priness saad! Priness cryyyying!" As if I were unaware.

Anyway.

I mention all of this because I was going to eat the toast so it didn't get cold. In my mind, the toast had an expiration date, a time beyond which it would be inedible. (And as a total aside: I saw a comedian not too long ago--I think a pretty famous one too--who did a bit about expiration dates, picturing a cowboy with a ten-gallon hat standing near the cows, labelling bottles as the cows were milked, and saying things like, "That's your goddamn date!" Which tickled me.) In Faery's mind, she had all day to eat that toast, and instead of performing a valuable act of rescue, Mommy was in fact stealing food right out of her precious little mouth.

That's right. You wondered what kind of person would steal food from a baby? This kind!

But expiration dates are very clear in my head, I think. I'm always in such a panic that my time will pass, it will be over, that whatever new idea I have isn't even worth a try because it's passe.

Which is pretty silly, and a lot self-defeating, but there it is.

I also have some theories about being self-defeating which I may explore later, but let's face it, you guys all adore me but don't really care to hear all of my theories about my own self-hatred and how that fuels me as a writer and attention whore, do you? Because really, that's like hearing somebody's dreams. Interesting nce or twice, deadly dull if it becomes a habit. (With the exception of my husband, because that guy has some fucked-up dreams, baby.)

My point today is simply this: I have an idea, I'm desperate to get started, but I wonder at this point if it isn't already too late. I feel myself pulled in another new direction as well, one that may end my original plans for where my career would go. I also have high, high hopes for something that would mark a change in my career, but one so exciting I could pee myself thinking of it. (And maybe just did...that's the magic of blogging.)

And so I wonder if someone isn't standing around, looking at my original plans, and saying, "That's your goddamn date!"