I'm just a little black rain cloud

Hovering over the honey tree,
I'm just a little black rain cloud,
Pay no attention to me.
Everyone knows that a rain cloud
Doesn't eat honey, no, not a nip,
Floating around,
Over the ground,
Wondering where I will drip.

So. That's how I feel today. I am in a funk par excellence. I should be in a good mood - today is my Friday, I'm taking off tomorrow for J's awards ceremony and year-end party. But I'm surly and unreasonable and thoroughly unfit for human consumption. My lunch is good enough, but I wish I had something else. I have no cash to go get something else. I have no good snacks in my desk drawer. And I have not one, but two two-hour conference calls today, one from 10:30-12:30 and one from 1:00-3:00. Even if I had money, I wouldn't have time to go get anything.

I think part of it is adjusting to losing the things I liked about being single (yes, there were actually some good things about it! LOL). Yeah, doing all the parenting stuff on my own sucked, but I had my space. To some extent, I've lost that, and I miss it just a little. Is that silly? I know if it were still me and J, nothing productive would get done around the house, I wouldn't have gotten Spring Fling done, J's behavior wouldn't be improving as much, and there'd be absolutely no hope for any improvement in the family finances. And I love Brian. But I miss having all my time to myself after J goes to sleep. I have more obligations now, and maybe I'm adjusting to the reality of that settling in. (And that sounds fairly awful, but I don't mean it in an awful way.)

I also think part of my mood is because I showed J the family movie video last night - all our old Super 8 home movies were put on videotape (I got them from my dad after the house flooded for a third times, so I could preserve them), and we watched them, and it's made me rather wistful. I miss my mom. I need to go sit somewhere and have a good cry, but there's really nowhere to do that anymore. Can't cry at work, it's just not the done thing. Can't cry at home, there's always someone around to ask me what's wrong. And this isn't the kind of cry where I want to be asked what's wrong and be comforted, I just want to get it out, you know?

And I think I also feel stuck at work. I'm not miserable at my job, but I'm not happy. This isn't where I saw myself at 40, I don't see it as a career position where I could gladly stay for the next 20 years, but I can't figure out where I do see myself or how to get there. I worry that with the economy what it is and our industry taking such a beating, they'll start laying people off at some point, and if that ever happened, and I were laid off, I don't know what I'd do. I think I've been out of the legal field so long, I've pretty much worked myself out of any legal jobs. I don't see doing what I'm doing now at a different company. But I don't know what I can do. I found a listing for a legal word processor that pays as much as what I make now - problem is, it's a night position, 3 PM to midnight. Something like that I could do, if it were at a decent hour and if they didn't tell me off the bat that I was overqualified. So, not enough experience for the high-dollar legal jobs (and I don't want those anyway - I've decided I'm not cut out to be a good lawyer, it's just a pity I didn't figure it out twenty years ago), too much education/experience for a lot of stuff I probably would be really good at (word processor, paralegal, legal secretary), and no idea of what else I could do that 1) pays enough to pay the bills and 2) doesn't require a huge outlay of money and/or time for education/certification. Yeah, I've really made something of my life, haven't I? A hot mess is what I've made, and I don't know how to make it better. I like to write, but have no idea how I'd even get started on any kind of writing position. I love doing my candles and bath stuff, but I can't quit my day job and do that full-time, not right now.

Ugh. Hot mess, indeed. This too shall pass, right?