I'm coming down off the flu only to realize that with the water still out in our house I was probably better off when I couldn't breathe or smell.

Today, I'm filling out forms I've been too addle-brained to fill out lately. Namely, 10,001 scholarship forms. What bemuses me is that I do our taxes. I do. That's great. That's not what bemuses me, that was half a sentence I just got caught up in it. What bemuses me is that I do our taxes every year, and it is hard and I usually need a real live cup of coffee to get through it but it is easier by the longest chalk imaginable than scholarship forms. Anyone who has filled out these forms will agree with me. The bemusing part is that a lot of people - enough to keep places in business who offer the service - don't and can't do their own taxes. They don't have the mental where-with-all to put up with the hardness of the forms or the sleepiness it induces or just simply they aren't cut out for see line 49b if you said yes here, if no, cut to line 50 and start completely over. 

I'm okay with it all. However, the scholarship forms for private schools make my eyes bleed. Seriously bleed. And there is no H&R anything that will walk and talk you through the damn things. There is a booklet you can print, bigger than the tax booklet you use to do the taxes. They ask more and harder questions. There are even more pages to the form. Seriously? Because the schools who offer the scholarships actually care more about their money and where it is going than the United States Government does? Seriously? 

I'm sure half of it is to induce the drop-out/failure rate.I I know that sounds cynical but I'm halfway through the form and if I had the money to send my daughter to school I would quite gladly quit now and pay these nice people the $20,000 just to never see this form again. I remember the form actually made me cry twice last year and it took me 8 hours. I've just hit the 5 hour mark and I'm actually thinking of coffee.

I know, it is a drug - that's why I quit drinking it about 5 months ago but you know what - I'm going to take the computer, and my bleeding eyes, and go to starbucks. I am about to spend $7 I could seriously stand to spend on food for the kids right now, or pull-ups or something and buy myself a cup of coffee. That means the form will cost me that much money - plus the money I have to submit to apply for a scholarship. I love that you have to pay to apply for a scholarship - that is so reasonable.

I'm sighing - can you hear me? Big fat, long-suffering-English-mother sighs.

Then, while I'm sucking down my third and or fourth cup of coffee, having laced it with any anti-nerve drug I can get my hands on (anything ending in pam or lam) I'm going to make a night of it and finish the scholarship forms for camp too. They are about a third less hard, I just didn't finish them because the entire world moved into my head and I haven't been able to focus past my nose for the last couple ear infected/flu infected weeks.

You know what you do when you're really sick - before you have five thousand kids and you can take the time off work? You lay on the couch all day, sucking down salsa from the jar in the fridge, over-dosing on vit c boosters and lay on the couch watching day time TV because you can't make your eyes even focus on trashy gossip mags. Oh wait - maybe that's just me.

When I was a kid, my favorite part of being sick was the couch. I would sit there and my mother wouldn't bother me for once (clean something, bring something, do something, fetch something, feed something). She would instead always - always it was like a religion - buy me a FRESH box of crayons and a new coloring book. I swear it makes me tear up now and it probably explains why I collect vintage crayons. (the longer you read the blog the more of those weird little markers you'll get, no doubt).

 My oldest son just came and asked me to wake his baby sister up from her nap so she could play - because she's missing all the fun they are having together in the back garden. That's why I love being a Mother - those moments. 

Anyway - so I'm sick, and my Mom is dead and there is no chicken soup in the house (am I pathetic or what?). I can't even bring myself to go dig the crayons out of the craft box. I just want to lay here and die. My head hurts too much for the noise of day-time TV and with the water off I can't even clean anything. So I started link trailing. It is this thing I used to do when I was bored. I discovered that if you click on a link, you can spend the rest of the day clicking on other links from that page and travel almost the entire internet without ever typing anything in your browser window. Keeping in mind I'm sickly cautious about what websites I go to and what I open as well,  but within these parameters you can still see a disturbing amount of information. I stopped doing it when I discovered I really liked sleep. In the old days I'd tear links off things. When everyone was first getting websites. Water bottles, shampoo bottles, yogurt cartons, plastics, etc.. Then, I'd start there, with kitchy home-spun business links. Today, I started in a link that came in my e-mail from a midwife about an opinion piece written by a professional blogger on a bit of birth culture. The piece itself was fantastic and I bookmarked it. Then, while reading her blog, I realized that many of the people who comment or guest write include their blog information. Then, I would follow those. Plus, anything these people buy or try or do they link to. Which leads me to stores and websites I've never seen or heard of, and some I have. 

So every time my eyes start to bleed from the scholarship form I click on one of these links. It wasn't until I realized I had about fifty of them open, and they were all compelling that I began to ponder how voyeuristic blog reading really is.

Oh God, I've found the day time TV of the internet - and I'm on it.