the difference between a little water and none

Dear Diary,

I miss you so.

We never talk anymore. What's up with that?

Dearest diary, please understand that reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. You must not imagine that I'm looking at the ringing telephone and laughing at it as it peals insistently on into defeated silence. Rumors may abound to this effect. But turn your ears aside; it is not so.

It's much more likely that I'm curled up in the fetal position, watching a Harry Potter movie on my DVD player and suffering in advance (which is something at which I excel) under the weight of real and/or imagined assignments. That may or may not include the laundry.

The laundry must be one of the darkest evils of good housekeeping that no one ever tells you about in home ec class. They taught us how to thread an automatic sewing machine and make peanut butter, but no one ever said, You will be in laundry up to your tear ducts and half of it will be either socks worn without shoes in the lawn full of unraked leaves; or outfits your children wore for five minutes and then discarded for something else in the enthusiasm of the moment. It will be your sole (and occasionally manky) responsibility to sort the difference between the two.

No one ever tells you that motherhood requires deep wisdom. That this profound store of knowledge is built on such sound truths as these:

• Sunkist and Skittles do not a sound dinner make.
• If your brother is playing happily by himself, there is no reason to rile him up and make him cry.
• Food is for eating, not playing with.
• The time to tell me this was last night, not this morning. (Applicable for homework, parental consent forms, and classroom cookies requests).

(I did learn how to make peanut butter in home ec. I used a blender to save time and sprained the blender instead. The kitchen filled with the unpleasant aroma of burnt engine oil and overheated machinery. People stood around and gawked. It's bad news when a tow truck is required to remove your domestic science efforts.)

I did learn something from that fiasco. I learned to buy peanut butter in a jar.

And now I've turned off the comments. I know I shouldn't have, but it seemed I wanted to check them far too often. I'd feel a great discouragement when I'd look and find none. I'd experience the worst kind of egomaniacal thoughts: Am I not interesting? Thought-provoking? Come on, that was genius! Now you tell me so. Don't hurt yourself. Just do it.

In short, every hedonistic impulse leaps to the footlights and, losing balance, falls over into them (much as I did in seventh grade during the middle school choir's production of the H.M.S. Pinafore. Let us not discuss it). So I took the comments away. This is my own penance, mine alone. I'm selfish, vain and incapable of making peanut butter. What more could one expect of me?

I hope to be a better correspondent in the future. I also hope to improve my posture, learn to play the guitar and speak fluently in a language other than English. I would like to travel to Europe before I die, dye my hair blonde and star in a B movie to celebrate Bastille Day. It's not so much to ask.

I must begin writing something every day, lest my fingers atrophy and fall off from lack of water. Sort of what's going on with those cacti I bought last month at the Harvest Festival. They swear at me each morning upon my waking: We may be cactus, but there's a difference between a little water and none, Sharon. You might want to look into it.

Thanks for your understanding, and for channeling a camel in this my time of deep and profound inarticulation.

Sharon