The gods must be crazy

**NOTE: Husband says that this post is evidence that my mind has snapped from lack of sleep. And, he is very alarmed by picture of carrot. For the record, I have gone only slightly insane. And will almost certainly not go Bobbit on anyone.

Yet.

Normal fun blogging will resume once I have had some sleep.

******

In which I am going to babble nonsensically and to no interesting end about theology and mythology and the like. Yes, it is heretical. Yes, I am probably going to hell. You might too, if you laugh. You’ve been warned.

I'm probably going to hear crickets on this one. I understand. But I need this rant. I'm viewing it as a counter-balance to the Flickian enthusiasm that seems to pervade everything else that I write these days.

And, am tired to the point of disassociation. Cannot resist operating heavy machinery.

Last week, in writing about the challenges of caring for an irrepressibly ambitious baby, I invoked the gods. Accidentally. Sort of. In a nice way. I thought.

I said that it was a small mercy from some divine force – God, Nature, the gods, whomever, whatever – that WonderBaby, who no longer sleeps for any significant stretch of time during the day, sleeps through the night. (Mercy, divine forces! I said mercy! I was THANKFUL!)

Maybe it was that I didn’t single out the appropriate divine force (I know, Mr. God – I should have no other gods before thee), maybe it was that I referred to their mercy as small (size matters, I guess, among the divinities), maybe there is some obscure commandment against taking God’s name in blog. Whatever. Somehow, I pissed someone off, and now they’ve taken away my night-time sleeping privileges.

WonderBaby is busy during the day. WonderBaby is busy during the night. WonderBaby has commenced round-the-clock ass-kicking.

(And, chomping - CHOMPING - the boobies. To demonstrate her will to power. Which, WonderBaby, if you're reading this - and I know that you are, late at night, after you have sucked me dry and left me collapsed on the floor - I GET IT.)

FUCK.

(Now, am pissing the gods off more, no doubt, with the cursing.)

(But how much more challenging can they make this, really? FUCK.)

Now, I have my suspicions as to who’s behind this. God - Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Israel and Judy Blume, Father of the Christ, etc, etc - is much too important and busy to have been bothered by my ungrateful bleatings about an over-functioning baby. So I’m pretty sure that the mercy of night-time sleep was neither extended nor withdrawn by God. The miracle of life, yes, I’m pretty sure that he’s behind that. But the sleep habits of infants, along with the outcomes of the Superbowl and FIFA games and deciding who gets to bear Brad Pitt’s children? Prolly not.

In any case, I suspect that God – and I’m sure that the old theologians, like Martin Luther and Augustine of Hippo , and the theistic and theosophic poets, like John Milton and Michael Landon, would agree with me, were they alive to see the 21st century – is off somewhere playing Texas Hold ‘Em with Mother Nature and the Holy Spirit and the prophets and their entourages. Leaving the world to spin and tilt and boggle and run askew.

And I think that they’ve left things in the hands of the Greek Gods. Who are bad mo-fos, yo. Bad. Not to be trusted with babysitting the world while the ‘rents get their game on. Was nothing learned from Homer? Please. It’s like leaving your children in the care of Courtney Love, Hunter S. Thomson and Jerry Springer. And then suggesting that they invite Tara Reid and Lizzie Grubman over for checkers. And maybe Ron Jeremy, too. You know, to pass the time.

Anyway. The chaotic state of the world as evidence of divine absenteeism is a topic for another day. My current concern is me, and how the gods are screwing me over. Or, at least, how some of the gods are screwing me over. Most of them are distracted at the moment by So You Think You Can Dance. (Which, Hephaestus, you can not. It's sad. Stop, before you become the William Hung of Olympus.)

It's tempting to point the finger at the goddess of goddesses, the goddess of marriage and motherhood: Hera, long-suffering wife of Zeus and reputed tormenter of mortal women. But I don’t think that Hera is behind my suffering. Hera gets a bum rap. You’d be a miserable old bitch too if your husband kept shape-shifting for the purposes of getting off on Greek women. And in any case, I think that Hera, aka old Bopis, has a soft spot for other big-eyed creatures, and WonderBaby has the whole cow-eyed thing down.

So, although Hera is the goddess of maternity and reputed to be something of a meanie, I don’t think that she’s to blame.

I’m calling out Hestia here. Sure, everybody loves Hestia, all sweetness and light, keeping the homefires lit and all that. But that girl’s got issues. Issues with penises. And here I’ve been chattering all over the place about penises and carrots (which may have also pissed off Demeter, but I’m reserving judgment*), penises and dolphins and penises and camels. And invoking Priapus, with whom she has a traumatic past. So I don’t think that it’s beyond the realm of possibility that she decided that she’d had enough of the penis talk and priapic invocation and got together with her buddie Hypnos to pull the curtain on HBM sleep by making WonderBaby even more wakeful. Thereby, presumably, putting a stop to all of the penis talk

*(I’m thinking, however, that Demeter, she of the wet-nursing gone horribly wrong, might be responsible for the nipple-chomping. So whatever I did to piss you off, Demmie, I’m deeply and profoundly sorry for. Now please make it stop.)

So, I concede defeat. I am helpless before the gods. I will cease all penis-talk immediately. And will make the necessary sacrifices.

Now, can I get some sleep? Please?

Cue music: The Sound of Silence...

Rest, Mommy...

... for I have need of PLAYTIME.

So, um, gods? Are you there, gods? It's me, Bad Mother...