TheMommyBlog

It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Anytime you quit hearing “sir” and “ma’am”, the end is pretty much in sight.
—Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Bell

No Country for Old Men is full of lines that have left me thinking for hours. And I’m not alone—anyone who has seem the movie is bound to be haunted by some unshakable sound, word, image, feeling. It stays with you.

For me, it was Tommy Lee Jones telling Barry Corbin that he’s retiring as a deputy.

Corbin asks, “Why?”

Jones replies, “I don’t know. I feel overmatched.”

I can’t shake it that line or the look on his face as he said it. It’s exactly what been eating at me lately, that the reason I can’t seem to get a toehold on this life. I feel overmatched.

Overmatched by what it takes to provide for three children as a single mom in Silicon Valley.

Overmatched by the knowledge that our generation for the most part will never know the level of security and certainty about life that our parents’ generation did.

Overmatched by the mortgage, the laundry, the schools, camps, activities, and the swatting away of poor influences and tending of good ones. My kids have been coming home from camp this summer able to spell and pronounce curse words I know I’ve never used in front of them (don’t EVEN get me started on Soulja Boy. Suffice to say that Logan’s jaw actually dropped open when I finally broke down and told him what a few of the lyrics meant).

I try to explain that it’s a matter of context. There’s no way anyone can stop them saying those words, but they have to be mindful of the context, the surroundings, the people around them. I don’t need my six year old daughter repeating any of this. The other day, I had a flashback to Meet the Fockers where the baby’s first word was “ah-so” which he overheard from Ben Stiller complaining about his father-in-law. Sure, it was funny in the movie, but not so funny hearing it from my daughter in the kitchen the other morning. When I promised a week’s worth of grounding to the next person who uttered that word in my presence, Daphne said, “I don’t think I even want to know what ahhole means.”

I’m overmatched by the information coming at me from all different directions (but mostly from this computer) and by sorting out what I’m supposed to do with it. I stopped reading magazines and newspapers, thinking I was paring down the number of information sources to keep my head from exploding, but in actuality, sticking to the papers does more to limit and encapsulate what’s going on around you in a way that the internet can’t. Once you’re there, there’s no limit to where you can go and there’s certainly no governor on it, telling you when to slow down or walk away.

It’s even worse when you work from home, like I do (or what we laughingly refer to as work here). I’m building a couple of web sites for people, hoping to pull in some freelance cash to hold us over until the next grant comes in for our nonprofit organization. We ran out of money in May and I’ve been doing the barrel and suspenders tap dance for two months now. I actually had to explain to the kids last night that we were going to divvy up the last of the frozen dinners between us for dinner, because my account was overdrawn and I couldn’t buy groceries. If they were still hungry, there was always popcorn! So we had Movie Night! Twice!

Ugh. I haven’t even been able to formulate any of this into coherent writing both because I am utterly overwhelmed, and because I feel compelled to spend every moment not caring for the house and the children on my projects just so I can hopefully get paid something, anything, so I don’t have to borrow or start selling my belongings.

I think there’s enough coffee to make a few cups this morning, so I think I’ll start there.