Another tiny break from the work (doing the work)

I want to be praised to the ever-loving skies for the work I am doing. I really feel that I am doing the work where I see it and it’s getting me down.

So I made a list of all the work I am trying to do:

Writing 1000 words a day for 14 days with my best parasocial friend, Jami Attenberg
Trying to write about my past as a mom in this house I am so attached too
A timeline listing all the attacks from Maggie in the past year and a half for the lawyer on our case, including video, screenshot, and epistolary evidence
Not going crazy as I sweat through life at weird times, grow giant breasts I cannot stand, and just look older and sadder every day. Mostly I feel pretty good but the giant breasts are so intrusive
Being as nice as possible to everyone I encounter, even when I want to tell them to pipe down (that is not often)
Not getting to go to a dance party because of rain
Facing Calvin’s step mother, who will remark on my chubby figure and torpedo-like breasts, in France, where I have no control over temperature so will sweat even more
Working at my job five days a week
Doing the Maggie list was a huge bummer and took all day

Here’s the work I haven’t done yet and am, in fact, blowing the heck off

I am not inputting the email addresses of the 9th grade parents who attended the orientation yesterday. I earned those email addresses but I just can not do it today. Listen, I owned that event. We developed this Survival Tip sheet and I made them give me their email addresses before I let them have the asset.

Now this was not a passive activity. I worked that gymnasium. It’s my favorite activity—hassling strangers with good will and cheer and help—but then you have to pay the price with data input. I got a lot of goodwill and chats and I’m just not typing in all these email addresses until tomorrow, or maybe the next day.

But I’m not doing it on the day I waddled through Maggie’s pile of venom. Also I didn’t exercise today.

I am a fragile flower. Reading and re-reading her insults just wipes me out. On a message board I follow (mean moms of whoever has a server) a woman posted that her friend had yelled at her for not being a good friend and she was very wounded by it, and I thought, wow, I get yelled at and insulted and scared pretty regularly and I feel fine.

But that is probably not true but yet true. It does keep you on your toes, though.

And of course getting yelled at by a friend is way worse than having a random crazy person randomly insult you.

List of Maggie’s insults of me (sorry this will be long bullets, but they don’t make sense)

That I am a failed comedy writer: Now, this is a good one because it is true. At the same time, I did sell a comedy series that became a comedy advertorial series for a huge brand (BandAid), and I was nominated for a writing Emmy and a Writer’s Guild award, and I wrote a bestselling comedy book in the 1990s. But I didn’t win, and didn’t make a lot of money from the book or the ads.
That I think the boarding school I went to was a fancy school and it’s not, not like Hotchkiss, which Maggie grew up near and knows people who went there: First of all, my boarding school was for kids who needed something extra and were not happy where they were, or who had money, or who were Native Americans. I have no delusions that it was an academic hothouse or elitist. It was a great place for me and it probably saved my life.
That I should live in Scarsdale: Now, is this antisemitic? I think it might be. My former best friend did grow up there, and Maggie’s soon-to-be ex husband kind of hit on her (I was so effing horrified when she told me.)
Accusing me of using Roundup, the insect-killing lawn product: I only garden under pressure. Great pressure. I do shoot the ants that come into the house with something very poisonous. Calvin had to transplant my pot plant. He waters it. I just take full credit for it.
That I have no ass: I kind of do.
That I had sex with her husband: No.
(I have to check my list. Is this all there is?)