Monday, December 2, 2019

That One Monday When I Was Cranky

One Monday night as we were heading to bed, Olivia asked me AGAIN, why I was always so tired and cranky.

First…it was a Monday.

Second, she asked me this at 9:30pm. I’d been awake since 5:30.

But to give a rundown of all the things that cumulated to make me cranky that night here’s the list:

I got home twenty minutes later than usual because I had to stop at Walmart before going home to buy packing tape. Do I use packing tape? No. I do not. But hell, since I am in town every single fucking day of the week, (you know, since I GO TO WORK) it’s no big deal to run into Walmart, is it? It’s way more convenient for me to do so than for the person who actually uses the damn tape to make a special trip to town to buy the tape. I mean, he never has to leave the house but we wouldn’t want to put him out and make him GO TO TOWN to purchase the items that help his business thrive. No, he has an assistant for that, right?

Ahem.

So, I walked in the door at 5:20. I’m informed that one of my children is on the toilet pooping. I’ll let you, dear reader, figure out which one. I mean, one of them wants help after she poops and one of them would rather die than require help from her mother after she moves her bowels. Again, I’ll let you decide which is which.

I leave the tape on the table, put the cash that was requested with the purchase of the tape on the counter. I look through Olivia’s folder and find her homework packet.

The pooping child announces, “I’m dooooone!” as I’m heading down the basement stairs. I suggest none-too-gently that perhaps she should wipe herself since I was BUSY.

Tom declared he was doing the dishes and couldn’t assist in the butt wiping.

The other child in the household said she was too busy doing her ab workout and couldn’t help either.

I transferred the clean, dry sheets from the drier to a basket. I put the clean, wet towels in the drier. I started the drier.

I paused and started watching HULU on my phone, a moment of peace in a world of chaos.

I finally headed back upstairs.

Guess who is STILL sitting on the toilet, waiting for someone, ANYONE other than herself to come and attend to her butt.

I stalked into the bathroom, told her to GET UP from the toilet. I gave her a wet wipe and told her to wipe her butt. She did and then she tried to hand me the used wipe! I told her to throw it away!

You guys.

I am so tired of dealing with anyone but my own bathroom issues I can’t even tell you.

I KNOW we’re lucky. I KNOW she’s doing great. I KNOW THIS. But I’m tired of it. SO TIRED.

Finally, we sat down to do homework. Sigh.

Through all this, there are sounds being made by several people in our house, (all of them except me) about us going to my mom’s house that evening.

I didn’t want to. I was tired. I just wanted to be home.

When homework was finally done at 6:05, I called my mom to let her know that we were JUST finishing up and she shouldn’t expect us.

She said that if we were hungry, we could come on over because she had food ready.

Fine.

At least I hadn’t taken my shoes off.

We drove to my mom’s. We ate. Olivia told stories and Alyssa amused my mom and Lloyd with her antics.

We got home at 7:15.

I went up to see if I needed to change the sheets on anyone’s bed. What does that entail? It requires me to SNIFF the sheets to see if they’re stinky. Yes. Let that sink in. I have to SMELL the sheets to see if they smell like urine.

It’s as gross as it sounds.

And she wonders why I’m cranky.

For what it’s worth, on this night, those sheets were not stinky. I repeat, NOT STINKY. So no beds needed to be stripped and remade. A small spark of joy in an otherwise long drudge of a night.

I just…I don’t even know. I don’t hate my life. Really I don’t. I know how good I’ve got it, relatively speaking.

I do realize that I don’t do more than any other mother and/or wife out there. It’s just that at the end of the day, I would like to be done. I’m tired, just like every other overworked parent in this world.

I would like my family to know that I’m sorry for my crankiness, though. They don’t deserve that. When I get like that, I need to just go find a quiet corner of our house and settle myself down.

As we settled in that night, Olivia said in the dark to no one in particular (I was the only other person in the room but whatever), "At least Dad's not tired and cranky all the time."

Yeah. At least she can count on Dad.