Things have been pretty cranky lately. The boy was sick last weekend, which necessitated cancelling a much-anticipated outing to see Real Live People whom we hadn’t seen in ages, and it’s still trailing on; he’s got a cold and is carrying a low-grade fever that’s not high enough to keep him home, so he goes to school, and then it’s higher when he gets home from school but is low enough to send him out the next day. He’s also dealing with a lot of social stress, both from friends and bossy/manipulative kids at school and here at home while he works through growing-up stuff.

He’s not the only one carrying a lot of stress. Financially things are pretty much stretched as taught as they’ll go; I logged back on as an active freelance copyeditor with the publisher again at the beginning of January, three months later than we’d planned, but nothing’s come my way yet. I’ve had to drop cello entirely for now, though I’m hanging on to orchestra every two weeks as my single get-out-of-the-house-and-see-other-adults time. Nana has made it possible for the boy to continue his own lessons, for which we are very grateful. Owlet is charming but wearing on us all, as she’s working through a lot of her own developmental stuff plus her two lower incisors are taking their not-so-sweet time about breaking through the gums. Her sleep patterns are all over the place (today she didn’t sleep for more than ten to fifteen minutes at a time, and is just as disagreeable as you might imagine as a result). Our nights are still broken a lot, and I don’t do at all well on fragmented sleep. Basically, I’ve run out of what energy I had in reserve, including the new-parent adrenaline that sees you through the first couple of months, and I’ve got nothing left.

In good news, the boy got his spot in the International School we were hoping to transfer him into. Now we get to angst about the social stress of switching him into a new school that’s full French immersion. In not so good news, the USB ports on my computer have decided to stop working, and none of the permission-resetting/PRAM resets/redownloads of updates have worked so far. I can’t sync or update my iPhone, use my printer, or back up via Time Machine to my external hard drive, and the USB receiver for my wireless mouse only works some of the time. All of this makes me pretty crazy, as my computer is my sole method of accomplishing work, and if I can’t work I can’t… no, I’m not even going there. I could always use HRH’s computer for work if I have to. In the meantime, Berny is very kindly talking me through repairing permissions and PRAM resets and reinstallation of updates, just in case it’s something along those lines, but nothing’s worked so far. Next up is upgrading to Snow Leopard, something I hadn’t done because it came out two weeks after I got my Mini and I wasn’t going to risk botching something that worked perfectly well. (Yes, years of Windows updates have scarred me.) HRH is going to talk to the certified Mac repair guy at work to see if he has any ideas or solutions, too.

So, um, yes. Things are hard, and weary, and I can’t get up here to write much at the moment. There’s Owlet’s six-month post coming up later this week, though!