Last night I made it clear to Brainiac that I had no intention of cooking dinner. None whatsoever. And I didn't want take-out, either, because take-out still means that someone has to clear-up and deal with leftovers and possibly even wash dishes and in our house that someone is almost always me. Since I had spent the day with Pouty McPouterson and Whiny McWhinerson (otherwise known as the Boy Wonder and Entropy Girl, respectively) I wanted nothing more than to sit in a nice air-conditioned booth with a magically refilling diet coke and I would gladly pay virtually any amount for the privilege of not cleaning up. That's how much I needed to relax and what we ate wasn't nearly as important as where we ate it.

No relaxing was to be had, but it was all my fault.

Early in the meal, I offered Entropy Girl what I thought was a piece of bell pepper from the pizza. She loves bell pepper. But she doesn't love jalapeño, which is what I actually gave her.

You can imagine the happiness that ensued. Entropy Girl pawed frantically at her mouth, trying to get the hot out. She refused her sippy and our entreaties to eat some bread and the tears...the tears they were copious. But I was confused....I couldn't imagine where she got a hot pepper, until at least I picked up and tasted the remains of the bell that she spit out.

It was the hottest jalapeño I've had in a while - a fresh one, which are always hotter than jarred. And thickly cut, with seeds and ribs removed it looked for all the world like a sweet bell.

Oh, the guilt.

A good part of my recent malaise is connected to the difficulties I'm having indulging my creative impulses. Because our house is for sale (wait - did I tell you this? I don't think so. More later, 'cause selling the house is a big ol' Dead Deer on the Front Lawn) I don't really feel free to start the kinds of projects that would leave a canning kettle simmering away on the stove or sewing machine mid-stitch on the kitchen table while potential buyers pick their way through the house criticizing my taste in furniture and analyzing what the book selection on my shelves means about my intellectual life.

Aside for a true house selling story: When selling our last place to move here we had great numbers of people through the house in the weeks leading up to Christmas. One of them left a note in my stocking - discovered Christmas day - telling me that he or she felt my collection of Italo Calvino's works indicated a desparate need to be thought of as smart. I'm willing to consider this, and I also wonder what leaving a note in a total stranger's Christmas stocking evaluating her emotional attitude towards intellectual acceptance indicates. Prickishness perhaps? Academic sanctimoniousness?

Anyway, the point here is that not being able to do the things that really make me feel settled is very, uh, unsettling. Once the house is sold I will feel free to willy-nilly go about with three projects underway, all interspersed with story time, play-dough sculpting, conference calls and dinner preparations. The pressure I feel to complete something in a single sitting - an entire batch of jam or a complete pair of pants to a Halloween costume takes away a lot of the joy I feel in meandering my way through. And so I haven't done much of anything. And I'm really, really sad about it. Even needlepoint isn't so satisfying to me if I can't leave it out and stitch here and there throughout the day. Soon, I hope, I will once again be at liberty to move about my day without worrying what someone might think of my very untidy hemming skills if the Halloween costume were to be left on the table.

This has been the Summer of My Discontent so the progress (however slight) made on the muse hunt is heartening. With luck, she'll be back bags unpacked and laundry washed in the not too distant future.

Entropy Girl had fever this morning giving me an excellent excuse for skipping Too Perky's aqua aerobics class, although I would have liked to have done my usual weights routine. The feeling of becoming physically stronger is new to me - strength usually comes to me in the form of I am Woman Hear Me Roar-type emotional outbursts, not in actual muscular enhancement. But no children are allowed in the gym's superbly-appointed "Kidz Zone" for 24 hours after a fever, messy diaper, or vomiting - reasonable policy, although some parents seem to have difficulty in applying it to their own children - and so I had to pass on my entire workout. Perhaps tomorrow. Then again, the planned roster of yard maintenance activities (down dead pine, spread a few thousdand yards of mulch, remove errant and unwanted rose bushes, pull weeds that have suddenly become taller than the Boy Wonder and so on) might just fill the exercise bill for the weekend.

Congratulations! You've just started your Tuesday in the best possible way!

So chirped the way too perky instructor at the conclusion of my aqua aerobics class this morning.

Funny. My version of the best possible start to my Tuesday involved less chlorine and fully made-up, bejeweled fellow exercisers and a whole lot more Pierce Brosnan and mimosas.

Too Perky and I are clearly working with different methodologies.