Sometimes lately, I feel like throwing in the towel and I hate it. I'm not sure if I was mentally unprepared for the start of school...or unable to get into a routine again once school has started? Lately I feel like I am seemingly at the brink and out of ammo. Wishing sometimes I could just schedule a mental breakdown in advance, be it for me or my children, just to know it's arrival and departure...Tuesdays at 2:17? Sure that will work. But life doesn't give you the luxury of doing that, I guess I can dare to dream.
In two days Atticus starts preschool. I've been asked numerous times, "...what will you do with your free time?" I always find it funny that people say that. It's not like a week's vacation. It's not like I'm being sent to an island paradise, with cabana servers and a fruity cocktail...It's only four hours a week that I will be alone. But to be honest, it is just as foreign as a vacation...time alone. I don't normally get that during daylight hours. I could count on one hand the times that I have been alone in my own house. It is going to be odd, wonderful, strange, exciting, and bizarre all at the same time. I've waited 11 years for this...sounds unusual to say it like that but it's true. With every other child that has started school, I was pregnant with another one, and the notion of being alone was, well, and alien concept. Right now I'm just happy I have four hours a week that I won't have to worry where Atticus has escaped to...
That's right. I have a little wanderer on my hands. He asks to go outside, and I tell him he has to stay in our yard until I get out there with him. He looks up at me with those big blue eyes, smiling with his dimples deep enough to swim laps in, and he says, "...yes Mommy, I will stay in our yard." Cut to me 4 minutes later, I'm outside looking for him. I wondered if he wandered in to go to the bathroom when I wasn't looking. The next thing I know, he's walking out of the neighbors' back door. The same neighbors (sainted by the way) that he just walked right into their house and started playing with their son. HOLY CRAP! I'm THAT mom. The one who's kid wanders away and into people's homes! Thankfully, I can also look at it like my neighbors are so nurturing Atticus is comfortable to be in their home...either way, the kid is going to give me a drinking problem.
I despise giving up, giving in, or throwing in the towel. There's no shame in it, knowing your limits means knowing yourself...understanding your strengths and your weaknesses. But admitting these things to yourself? Seeing them pointed out to you by your children? Or having to remind said children that there is only one adult living in this house, therefore life is different than "so-in-so" here. We have limits financially. The mental clock-out time of this adult, and the only one in this house, is possibly earlier than they would like to go to their room at night-I cannot wait for the time change in the fall. I guess I should be happy that they don't see the differences that we have with most families they know, but having to admit defeat...makes me feel already defeated.
Then tonight, while the Talls and the Smalls were wearing off their dessert, they started playing this bizarre game of dog pile. Clearly, it wasn't their first time playing it. Oscar says he'll be on the bottom first, but as soon as he says "get off" everyone has to get off of him. Abe immediately chimes in and says "No, no! You need to say PORK CHOPS!" I was like what? A safety word? And that's what they did. They all piled by age order onto Oscar. Nora was squealing the loudest, as this was the closest thing to a hug she gets from her brothers, and Atticus strategically using the coffee table to jump off of to land on top of the pile. There would have been a time when I would not have been able to watch them do this. There would have been a time when I would have been too worried that they were being rowdy and rough. But, fascinated by their use of a "safety word"...it put a lot of things into perspective in an instant. When you're getting ready to loose your shit, throw in the towel, or just give up...maybe you just need to yell out PORK CHOPS?! Maybe...
Showing posts with label mental battle field. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental battle field. Show all posts
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Sunday, September 21, 2014
...chicken or beef?
...it's the same song, the same dance. Shopping with children, 4 children to be exact is hectic. It's only a luxury I rarely take to shop alone. Shopping with kids? I take it on as a challenge, with a cocktail medal at the finish line when we are hopefully all back in our home safe and sound. The freak outs, tantrums, arguments, battle of wills...and that is all before we reach the check out lady.
It's a mental battle field...choosing words wisely, strategy and how to get out of the store before DCFS is tipped off. You know the game, and you are willingly playing it because, the kids have to eat, wear diapers, and you are needing to stock your liquor cabinet...the whole process must be done. The freak outs are inevitable. You plan for them as best you can accordingly, like an army ground crew needs a medic, and hope you can charge the front without casualties. However, the best freak outs are those that are some how etched into minds forever in infamy. Only spoken of again in "hushed reverent tones" as a warning of what was one fateful day...
I've learned a thing or two in 10 years. You would never hear me utter "...what would you like for dinner (or any other meal)". This only loosely translates into me being a short order cook or lousy with money. I offer them one thing when we are out. It's an easy out for myself and it is ALWAYS veiled with the idea of look how fun/lucky/yummy/adventurous/fortunate/etc. this could be. But, it seemed this day, it was my turn for the freak out.
I blame Wal-Mart. I think it is a vastly unused form of criminal punishment for anyone to take 4 kids to Wal-Mart on the first of the month or on a weekend. I dare you, DARE YOU, to make it out unscathed. After offering a lunch option I thought would be a viable, not to mention a good diversion from the nightmare that I already lived shopping...it was shot down...laughed at...and thinly implied that didn't I have thousands of dollars to take them out to eat? The only honorable thing I managed to do that day, was wait until I got into the car before I lost my S*#T...it was calm toned, slightly bitter, but dripping with sarcasm.
On the thirty minute drive home they kept asking "...what's for lunch?". I ignored them. They even tried to imply that my freak out was possibly my fault, they each wanted something different. I turned up the radio, to quiet the voices in my head. While driving, I realized it had been a while since I lost it. The fact that these kids were dictating to me what MY next move would be? NOPE, NOT TODAY...where was Wonder Woman's lasso of truth when you needed it?
About halfway home, I pulled into a Wendy's parking lot. Immediately, as if I was already taking their lunch orders, they started calling them out to me as if I were wearing a name tag and a headset. "I want the giant-super-sized-mega-burger-$12-meal-blah-blah-blah". I put the car in park. I turned off the radio and very calmly said, "...your only choice is chicken or beef...you are not paying, so you will not be ordering..." The just looked at me, slack jawed as if I were speaking in another language. This is where calm left. In a rattled, shaken, mom of four voice I managed to shrill yell, CHICKEN OR BEEF?!?!?! I ordered, we pulled back onto the highway, and it was the quietest, most contented drive I have ever had.
Today, in my own home for lunch they were each asked chicken or beef noodles-yeah, I'm a culinary wizard. One of my precious angels turned and said "...well, what else is there? I don't want that..." I repeated the same thing I had before, chicken or beef? Oscar looked up from what he was doing and said in a hushed tone "...for the love of all that is holy, just pick one! Don't you remember last time?" Then suddenly, as if forgetting I was still in the room, he looked up at me. I couldn't contain it, I started busting out laughing...then I heard Abe yell out CHICKEN! Glad to know this freak out left an impression, completely convinced it won't be the last...
It's a mental battle field...choosing words wisely, strategy and how to get out of the store before DCFS is tipped off. You know the game, and you are willingly playing it because, the kids have to eat, wear diapers, and you are needing to stock your liquor cabinet...the whole process must be done. The freak outs are inevitable. You plan for them as best you can accordingly, like an army ground crew needs a medic, and hope you can charge the front without casualties. However, the best freak outs are those that are some how etched into minds forever in infamy. Only spoken of again in "hushed reverent tones" as a warning of what was one fateful day...
I've learned a thing or two in 10 years. You would never hear me utter "...what would you like for dinner (or any other meal)". This only loosely translates into me being a short order cook or lousy with money. I offer them one thing when we are out. It's an easy out for myself and it is ALWAYS veiled with the idea of look how fun/lucky/yummy/adventurous/fortunate/etc. this could be. But, it seemed this day, it was my turn for the freak out.
I blame Wal-Mart. I think it is a vastly unused form of criminal punishment for anyone to take 4 kids to Wal-Mart on the first of the month or on a weekend. I dare you, DARE YOU, to make it out unscathed. After offering a lunch option I thought would be a viable, not to mention a good diversion from the nightmare that I already lived shopping...it was shot down...laughed at...and thinly implied that didn't I have thousands of dollars to take them out to eat? The only honorable thing I managed to do that day, was wait until I got into the car before I lost my S*#T...it was calm toned, slightly bitter, but dripping with sarcasm.
On the thirty minute drive home they kept asking "...what's for lunch?". I ignored them. They even tried to imply that my freak out was possibly my fault, they each wanted something different. I turned up the radio, to quiet the voices in my head. While driving, I realized it had been a while since I lost it. The fact that these kids were dictating to me what MY next move would be? NOPE, NOT TODAY...where was Wonder Woman's lasso of truth when you needed it?
About halfway home, I pulled into a Wendy's parking lot. Immediately, as if I was already taking their lunch orders, they started calling them out to me as if I were wearing a name tag and a headset. "I want the giant-super-sized-mega-burger-$12-meal-blah-blah-blah". I put the car in park. I turned off the radio and very calmly said, "...your only choice is chicken or beef...you are not paying, so you will not be ordering..." The just looked at me, slack jawed as if I were speaking in another language. This is where calm left. In a rattled, shaken, mom of four voice I managed to shrill yell, CHICKEN OR BEEF?!?!?! I ordered, we pulled back onto the highway, and it was the quietest, most contented drive I have ever had.
Today, in my own home for lunch they were each asked chicken or beef noodles-yeah, I'm a culinary wizard. One of my precious angels turned and said "...well, what else is there? I don't want that..." I repeated the same thing I had before, chicken or beef? Oscar looked up from what he was doing and said in a hushed tone "...for the love of all that is holy, just pick one! Don't you remember last time?" Then suddenly, as if forgetting I was still in the room, he looked up at me. I couldn't contain it, I started busting out laughing...then I heard Abe yell out CHICKEN! Glad to know this freak out left an impression, completely convinced it won't be the last...
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