What Do You Get When You Cross an Elephant With a Cheetah?

You get a girl at the crossroads, my friends.

I can't believe I put up that semi-whiny post about my birthday...and then, yet again, disappeared from blogland. It's been a hell of a week. A few weeks, really. And what I mean by that is, it's been a hell of a few weeks in my head and in my gut, if not necessarily from an external point of view. Between adjusting to the new workplace, grieving the end of "Tween Us Girls", and finding myself involuntarily - yet constantly - pondering what the future holds for me personally, I feel like I have been endlessly looping through the stages of grief. And let me tell you, it's pretty freaking exhausting.

I am truly loving my new workplace. Let's start with that. Suddenly, I'm excited again about what I do for a living. I finally feel like I have room to grow, like I might be in slightly over my head at the moment but that truly good things are possible and even likely to happen. When is the last time I felt like that about work? Couldn't even tell you. So this is all good, positive stuff...and yet, the moving experience has been a little bit like getting divorced all over again. I'm pretty sure people make decisions to better themselves by changing jobs in all kinds of industries fairly often, but in my industry it seems to be viewed by some as a kind of betrayal. What's up with that?

The complication with loving my new workplace, and in totally engrossing myself in my work again, is that it doesn't leave many brain cells firing at the end of the day. Which makes it difficult to write. Which brings me to my mourning of the end of my column: I know I said I was okay with it, and I think I actually am. But still it has knocked some air out of me, and made me feel a little sad. Writing is a deeply ingrained passion, and pursuing it professionally has been kicked to the back burner more times (and for more stretches of time) than I care to recall. Writing my silly little column for the past year made me feel like I was finally doing something legitimate with all that longing to write. And now it's history. And while I naturally have the best of intentions to seek other opportunities to write elsewhere...um, exactly when am I going to do anything about that? Hmmm?

Somewhere in between Third Grader's softball practice schedule, which just began, and both girls' gymnastics schedules? Maybe in my spare time on the weekends - except for this past weekend, aka States Meet, which sucked up every minute of our lives from Friday night until Sunday afternoon. Oh, and not this weekend coming up, due to Fifth Grader's back-to-back birthday party itinerary on Saturday and, yes, softball practice on Sunday. If the term "cheetah" had not already been claimed by a certain ubiquitous and now-nearly-past-their- prime girl pop band, I would have to say the term is more fitting than "cougar", given the speed at which I find myself moving on a daily basis. Seeing as I found myself literally falling asleep at the table at seven o'clock Sunday night, I don't see a lot of time being carved out for querying publishers any time soon.

And then there's the elephant. The great big one in the middle of the room. This elephant goes by the harrowing name of Where Is This Relationship Going? ...It's a long name, but really, it's an elephant, so the long name thing works. And all I'm going to say about this elephant is that it's really pissing me off lately. Regardless of everything else that I have already mentioned is going on in my life right now - which is a whole, freaking lot of stuff - that damn elephant keeps right on stomping in to the center of every room that I'm in and forcing me to acknowledge it. "Say my name!" it keeps demanding of me. And since it is so damn insistent, I find myself reflexively saying its name to Boyfriend at every inopportune moment.

If you have ever encountered this elephant yourself, you can just imagine how sweet and charming this message might be coming across. Personally, I am totally out of my element here. I don't do needy. Some days I would really like to shoot that damn elephant, go get a couple hundred cats and be done with the whole thing.

And yet, why does it keep showing up? There must be a reason.

Anyway, enough of my safari metaphors for one day. I think I was supposed to go watch the elimination round of DWTS with Fifth Grader about forty-five minutes ago. Something tells me she has fallen asleep waiting for me. Bad, bad mommy.