Post Partum...

Oh my! Has it really been 10 days since the play had its reading at the Kennedy Center? And do I really have...post partum play depression?

Yep.

I kept thinking no matter how the reading goes after it's over I'm going to feel relief. Like, a hearty "Hallelujah!". I even had the photo planned for after the play with my Jewish mother, on the balcony of the Kennedy Center, looking triumphant, her looking so proud of me (like I just got my medical degree)...me feeling like a million bucks. But Instead - maybe not too surprisingly when I really think about it - after the play I felt like my laundry pile just got a whole lot bigger.

What the fuck was I thinking? I don't have time to write a play.

Our tuition lawsuit against the local school district is in high gear with lots of mudslinging and analytical thinking, neither of which is in my comfort zone; and I need a much heftier income than "playwright" if we lose our lawsuit with the school district; I've got dinner to plan and make; Jacob's dance schedule to figure out (Jazz on Monday conflicts with Aden's soccer and the dread locked twenty year old at the front desk in the Dance studio doesn't seem to know more than how to take my money - "it's not in my genre" she tells me every time I ask her a question beyond taking money); oh, and I have a million people to get back to for my other play BIRTH, not to mention a symposium I"m speaking at in October; and now...a new play. Exciting, exhilarating and exhausting. Mostly after the Kennedy Center I just felt exhausted. My hair had been falling out for a week before the performance and it still is today.

So I've been letting the whole experience sit for these past 10 days. Lay low.

And then Friday after a loud night out at a fabulous pizza place with good friends, with the encouragement of my girlfriend and her husband (who runs a nonprofit in DC but I think his calling might be LA Super agent), they convinced me that I have to keep working on the play. Rewrite. Get it out there. Inspire mothers to tell their mothering journeys. In invite Michelle Obama. Start a dialogue on motherhood.

That's when I started thinking: maybe...maybe.

It sounded good on Saturday. But that's when I thought - after an average of 25 emails a day for 2 weeks - our soccer carpool had finally been worked out. On Monday I found out one of the soccer moms fired her au pair so...I know any minute the soccer emails are going to start again. I can feel it in my pounding head. And then what? We lose our case with the school district and I have to go buy a cheap business suit, make some "real" money so Jacob can go to a school that meets his learning needs, and throw out my dream of getting this new play out there.

Oh, there I go again, I'm close to flushing myself down the toilet.

Complaining is so annoying. I actually did enjoy this week's drive with the 4 boys to soccer practice... until my cell phone rang with an urgent message from Tim just as we were passing a grave yard and Jack decided to scream out "GRAVE SITE!!!!!" at an octave beyond my ear drum capacity and then all 4 boys saw a police car and started screaming "POLICE!!!!!" at a level of sound that made 2 Advil a requirement after drop off.

I really do like mothering.

And that's my point. I like it and I want to write about it. I thought a comment someone made after the play was that on the play's poster the baskets filled with laundry also looked like cupcakes. This perfectly describes motherhood: the sweetness and the overflowing, never ending number of chores to do.

Sounds like it would make a good play.