Things that came up and (unexpectedly) kicked my butt this past week:

• I was scheduled to play piano for church yesterday. My dog ate my music. No joke. The stupid thing can barely limp up and down the stairs, but he somehow managed to find and destroy the one thing I needed this weekend.
• My coworker and I were reprimanded unfairly on Friday out of the blue. Harsh and untrue things were said.
• One of my best friends is leaving for Iraq. Today. He'll be doing the same thing he does here in Americaland (airplane maintenance) but for like triple the pay. It will, however, do triple the damage to my nerves while he's gone.

Normally, I would just shrug the first two items off and dump them in a pile of "Memories That Were Not So Great." They would remain buried under a rug somewhere, hanging out with a good portion of my memories from junior high. The third is obviously of a little more importance to me, so I'm prepared for it to continue kicking my butt in the weeks to come.

There was nothing normal about the way I handled anything this week, though. I broke down crying more often than I'd like to admit, and I even wound up begging for hugs on Twitter. I panicked when I found that I didn't have music for Sunday, even though I don't usually practice beforehand. I couldn't go. My mother graciously agreed to let me call in sick, but I froze at the idea of making a phone call. I told her I wanted to quit my job, to quit going to church, to quit doing everything I was forced to do. I spent hours sobbing while she listened to me talk in circles about how unhappy I was with one aspect of my life or another.

Finally, at the end of her rope, my mother offered me three choices — play piano, call in sick, or agree to go to therapy. My decision had to be made by quarter to six on Sunday morning when she came to wake me.

I am here to testify that some decisions should not be made at 5:45 am. This was one of them.

As of today, I am officially bound to a verbal agreement with my mother which states that I will go to therapy beginning this week. (Fortunately, I managed to tear myself away from Dreamland this morning long enough to make sure that this is simply a one-month trial as opposed to a ten-year commitment. Ditching one day of responsibilities isn't worth ten years of therapy, not even to an emotionally unstable and sleep-deprived trainwreck.) I'm not sure what to do with this concept of needing help or accepting help, so I'm going to crawl back into bed with some hot chocolate and blankets. I'll watch some Lord of the Rings and hope this was all one giant nightmare.

Oh right, and I'll pray constantly that nothing happens to this wonderful boy young man while he's overseas.

A woman stopped by the church with her five-year-old daughter today. At some point, I made the mistake of smiling at the little girl and acknowledging her very cute existence on this planet. This created some instant bond between us, and I was then awarded the privilege of being her new buddy for the day. I probably would have enjoyed this a lot more if crayons or cartoons had been involved, but I don't have any good excuse to have either of those things on hand in my office.

Anyway, my new BFF followed me to my desk and launched into conversation without hesitation. "What are you doing?" she asked plainly.

"Umm.. I'm making a brochure," I said, kicking myself for not having a cooler job.

"Oh. Cool! I wanna work when I get to be big and not a kid. When are you gonna be not a kid anymore and go to big school?"

I fumbled for a good answer to that. "Well, I already went to college, so I kinda did go to big school." Wait, did she mean kindergarten? Probably. Maybe high school?

"But you're not a big kid," she told me. "When are you gonna grow up?"

Not sure whether to feel complimented or insulted by that, I answered, "Soon, I hope."

Her eyes lit up. "So are you going to get married and have kids?"

At this point, I desperately wanted to switch the topic to the Dora jacket she was wearing. Pulling out my Swiper reference would have been much less painful and awkward than trying to salvage the current conversation. She was way too eager to hear my answer, though, so I responded, "One day, I hope. I need a boyfriend first, though."

"Haha! That's funny. Boyfriend. So umm, when are you getting married? Sunday?" (Clearly, she's in cahoots with my coworkers, trying to set me up and marry me off as soon as possible.)

"Aww, no, sadly, I don't have a boy to marry yet. Maybe next year or the year after that, though." I smiled and threw as much hopefulness as I could into my voice.

She was more disappointed by this news than I've ever been, and even my own mother hasn't ever shown that much concern for my love life as this little girl did in that one moment. So, she did what five-year-olds do best. She went straight to the heart of the issue and asked, "Why can't you get a boy?"

Silence.

I couldn't decide whether to hug her or punch her. I finally managed to distract her by mentioning Texas and trailing off into a bunch of excuses, which she took as her cue to tell me her own story. "I live at church, where I go to Sunday School, which really isn't Sunday School but it's at the church." I spent the next five minutes nodding like a pro at all the words tumbling out of her mouth in a tangled mess of childish glee, and then her mom finally came to take her away.

Tomorrow, I'll have crayons.

Snow. Still. Everywhere. I would very much like to be outside making snow goons, Calvin and Hobbes style. Sadly, I'm frozen to my chair. I managed to summon two blankets to my lap, but I can still feel my blood cells morphing into tiny little snowflakes. Yeesh.

On a slightly related note, now would be a nice time to have a cuddly boy around. Maybe I should start adding "BF" to all my Wal*mart lists again. On second thought, that probably doubles his chances of being made of lead.

Blankets and hot chocolate it is.