Don't you hate those days when...
you reach into the little decorative bowl that holds your contacts case, and it's smeared with toothpaste. why is there toothpaste in my little bowl? no one uses this but me?
you spend all evening and half the wee hours of morning sorting and organizing your drawers and you strategically place a special flashlight in your bedside table and you find your 5 year old carrying it around and the batteries are missing... and then you wonder where are the batteries? what else is missing? why can't I have a single corner of this house that is sacred and things are safe?
you set your laptop in the table and plug it in just as water starts to drip through the ceiling all over the floor inches from the table. dude. why can't a practically grown adult see the logic in having a towel on the floor when stepping out of the shower? and why must fully grown mother verge on going freaking bananas to convince him that he cannot leave the water on the floor for one extra minute or the ceiling could rot and cave in on us?
you decide, after noticing them everyday since last spring, to clean the ladybugs out of the ceiling fixture in your dining room and you grab the vacuum, plug it in-- no suction. take the hose out, unclog, no suction. shove a wooden spoon through the bottom of the vacuum and there is a dead halt. total and complete blockage, which requires a freaking screwdriver and another half hour of fuss.
the entire time i've been sitting at this laptop a little boy has been in the yard crying. crying and screaming. then screaming and crying. does no one hear him? is there no one else available to tend to his desperate cries? no one to take him by the hand and bring him in the house when there is no resolution to his screaming?
I'm spinning out. I should have known when I almost started crying after I picked up the batteries from the flashlight off the floor. Maybe it's PMS. Seriously though, I max out and people start pointing out how crabby I am. No one seems to notice that I'm scrambling to find something to catch the water coming through the ceiling, or that I'm sitting on the kitchen floor covered in dirt from the vacuum for an hour, or that at the end of the night when my hands are finally clean and I go to take my contacts and they are suddenly covered with toothpaste... I CAN'T EVEN TAKE OUT MY DANG CONTACTS BECAUSE THERE'S TOOTHPASTE EVERYWHERE!!!!
It never ends. I keep hoping it will get better, kids are getting bigger, kids are moving out, we're getting a better groove... tell me what the definition of crazy is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. (by the way, I don't buy it. The definition of crazy is much more complex than that. I know. I could write it from personal experience.) I need to be shaken and told the truth. "This isn't going to get better. The only part of this that you can control is your response to it."
Pep talk to self, "self, if you can't handle this with grace and patience, there are helps that can assist you with this. find them. use them. you are teaching your tribe life by every single word that you say. scream at them and they will scream back. bury them in sarcasm and they will take you down with far more cutting sarcasm as adults. show them mercy, and they will show mercy. respond with patience and they will learn the language. speak quietly and patiently and they will speak to you, in kind. Be who you wish you were and they will believe it."
Ok. I just needed to get that out.
I miss you. Thanks for showing up.
lvb
you reach into the little decorative bowl that holds your contacts case, and it's smeared with toothpaste. why is there toothpaste in my little bowl? no one uses this but me?
you spend all evening and half the wee hours of morning sorting and organizing your drawers and you strategically place a special flashlight in your bedside table and you find your 5 year old carrying it around and the batteries are missing... and then you wonder where are the batteries? what else is missing? why can't I have a single corner of this house that is sacred and things are safe?
you set your laptop in the table and plug it in just as water starts to drip through the ceiling all over the floor inches from the table. dude. why can't a practically grown adult see the logic in having a towel on the floor when stepping out of the shower? and why must fully grown mother verge on going freaking bananas to convince him that he cannot leave the water on the floor for one extra minute or the ceiling could rot and cave in on us?
you decide, after noticing them everyday since last spring, to clean the ladybugs out of the ceiling fixture in your dining room and you grab the vacuum, plug it in-- no suction. take the hose out, unclog, no suction. shove a wooden spoon through the bottom of the vacuum and there is a dead halt. total and complete blockage, which requires a freaking screwdriver and another half hour of fuss.
the entire time i've been sitting at this laptop a little boy has been in the yard crying. crying and screaming. then screaming and crying. does no one hear him? is there no one else available to tend to his desperate cries? no one to take him by the hand and bring him in the house when there is no resolution to his screaming?
I'm spinning out. I should have known when I almost started crying after I picked up the batteries from the flashlight off the floor. Maybe it's PMS. Seriously though, I max out and people start pointing out how crabby I am. No one seems to notice that I'm scrambling to find something to catch the water coming through the ceiling, or that I'm sitting on the kitchen floor covered in dirt from the vacuum for an hour, or that at the end of the night when my hands are finally clean and I go to take my contacts and they are suddenly covered with toothpaste... I CAN'T EVEN TAKE OUT MY DANG CONTACTS BECAUSE THERE'S TOOTHPASTE EVERYWHERE!!!!
It never ends. I keep hoping it will get better, kids are getting bigger, kids are moving out, we're getting a better groove... tell me what the definition of crazy is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. (by the way, I don't buy it. The definition of crazy is much more complex than that. I know. I could write it from personal experience.) I need to be shaken and told the truth. "This isn't going to get better. The only part of this that you can control is your response to it."
Pep talk to self, "self, if you can't handle this with grace and patience, there are helps that can assist you with this. find them. use them. you are teaching your tribe life by every single word that you say. scream at them and they will scream back. bury them in sarcasm and they will take you down with far more cutting sarcasm as adults. show them mercy, and they will show mercy. respond with patience and they will learn the language. speak quietly and patiently and they will speak to you, in kind. Be who you wish you were and they will believe it."
Ok. I just needed to get that out.
I miss you. Thanks for showing up.
lvb
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