Actually, LONGER than that.
She was crying before we left the house.
Why was she crying?
Because she didn't WANT a breakfast burrito.
She wanted oatmeal.
So, rather than just adjust and dream of the oatmeal she could have tomorrow, instead, she tilted back her head and wailed to the heavens; praying God would hear her cries and send down a lightning bolt into our car striking me and my
breakfast-burrito-making hands.
For 30 minutes straight.
Drool was produced for dramatic purposes.
There she sat in the back, hoping to make eye contact with me in the rear-view mirror so I could see her ultimate distress.
She craned her neck to remain in my view and shot lasers at me with her eyes.
Alena was in the passenger seat huffing her breath in between pages of her library book because little sisters are just SO IRRITATING and CAN'T I TELL HER TO STOP?!
I was driving.
And dreaming.
Fantasizing about reaching for the latch on my door and just rolling out into the grass beside the bike path, laying in wait, and then hijacking a stranger's bike and riding as fast as I could in the opposite direction of the car.
Never...to be heard from...again.
I thought about how great it would be to have an ejector seat.
There are far too few of those in this world.
I actually wish for one often.
For me.
For others.
Just one touch of the button and I could be soaring off into the big blue in slow-motion while a Coldplay soundtrack plays as background music.
I guess it's a coping mechanism.
It's the only way I can function sometimes.
To just pretend that the situation I'm in is a different situation than it actually is.
Sort of a "laugh to keep from crying" mentality.
That's not a van full of fighting, screaming children that I want to choke.
It's a group home for the mentally disturbed and I am their leader.
They can't help it.
They were born this way.
That's not dog throw up I just stepped in with bare feet.
It's lotion and I'm about to get a glorious foot massage!
It's not so bad to have an emotional break-down, right?
Rocking in a corner earns me Weight Watcher Activity points.
But I just about lost it when I looked back in the car at one point and saw Chloe picking all the hash browns out of the burrito strand by hashy strand.
She doesn't like "mashed potatoes," she sobbed.
Well you know what I don't like?
A kid dissecting a burrito and wailing in the back of my Volvo before I've had my coffee.
That's what.
It didn't help that I've been SO stressed out lately.
I actually think I'm having some sort of hormonal issue.
At least that's what I keep telling myself so I don't have to face it if it's just a run of the mill nervous-breakdown.
I'd rather blame it on something that doesn't make people look at you with bulgy eyes and take a step back with their arm over their children's chests as if to guard them from the crazy lady.
I think I'm just past my limit.
Far past.
And I am
So.
Tired.
I haven't slept past 8:00 or gone to bed before 11 in what feels like years.
When I mentioned this to Justin last night before bed and asked why I always had to be the one to get up and take the kids to school and why he got to sleep in all nestled in with his C-Pap his response was,
"You're just BETTER AT IT than me."
People.
This man is lucky to be alive and mobile today.
D.
N.
R.
Better at WHAT?
Setting my alarm?
Feeling the weight of responsibility of having our children groomed and educated?
Better at pressing on, regardless of fatigue so strong that SEVERAL times a day I have to fight the urge to just lay down flat on my face wherever I am; be it Kitchen, Garage, or Costco line?
Better at it.
Hmph.
From now on, I will strive to be better at sleeping in than him.
That's the kind of competition I'd love to win.
My friend Beth came over tonight to pick up one of my Namescapes for a silent auction prize I'm donating to help her raise money for her upcoming adoption.
Beth already has three kids under the age of five.
She will be adopting two kids from the Congo, both under the age of three.
Beth is virtually dripping with stress.
Beth looked like a zombie.
When she came in, I was upstairs wrestling Paige into her footie pajamas.
No easy feat.
It's comparable to trying to put a cat
in a dress.
A 25 pound cat.
Beth trudged on upstairs to chat with me while I did it and INSTANTLY I recognized her look.
The universal look of mothers.
The look of wishing to be clubbed over the head with something blunt in order to have just a few minutes of unadulterated rest.
She actually wasn't even looking at me.
She was looking past me at my Cal King bed.
"Can I just LAY DOWN?!" She asked, and I laughed.
Only she wasn't kidding.
She really really wanted it.
This is when we had the conversation about over stretching ourselves.
About taking on more than we actually should.
About how freaking TIRED we are.
It's kind of the burden of a creative soul.
You feel like your light has been snuffed if you're just doing mundane tasks, so you add in some creative, but the second you do, you realize you just added ONE MORE THING to your list that's already twelve pages long.
It's all Pinterest's fault.
It calls to me with it's Siren Song.
I probably don't really have time to make homemade individual Vicks Vapor shower steamers, but gosh darn it, it's almost cold season.
And I've been on the hunt for good pallets for months now, not even sure what I'd do with them. There are just SO many good options....
I mean, sure,
I'll just hammer out a floating pallet shelf right after I drive carpool, and do daycare, and grocery shop, and make dinner, and design a logo, and practice a song, and paint a MURAL.
Let's not even get STARTED on that.
Meanwhile, my stress rises to levels that have me questioning DAILY if I'm having a stroke or not.
Is my face numb?
Why does my mouth feel weird?
I have stood in the mirror on SEVERAL occasions assessing whether or not one side of my face looks more droopy than the other.
Poking it to see if the sensation is even.
I'm yelling more.
I'm threatening more.
And still the girls just fake to listen and try not to smile as the veins in my neck bulge out so far that the shadow of my head and neck look like the shadow a trophy cup would make.
Then the second I turn my back they're whispering,
"Chloe, did you see Mama's face? (*snicker*) Her eyes looked like they were crying and she had black stuff under them."
*joint laughter*
They don't listen.
That's crazy talk.
We just took them to see Wreck it Ralph a few days ago, which I'm sure was intended to make people identify with the two outcast type characters.
Not me.
I identified with a whole different character.
Qbert.
He always looks forlorn and no one can understand him.
He opens his mouth and all that comes out are symbols that sound like gibberish.
He's powerless with no hands, but he has feet and boy does he hop around.
He probably feels trapped in his round little body.
The only one of his kind.
Unable to communicate his wants and desires and need for sleep past 7:00, and not wanting,immediately upon waking, to make six breakfasts that aren't appreciated followed by 30 different snacks FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE STOP WITH THE SNACKS!!!
Poor,
misunderstood
Qbert.
#?!*$#&!
I bet Qbert would love a breakfast burrito.