Is it midnight yet?

I need this day to be OVER.  F--- Cinco de Mayo.  I'm sorry, this has rapidly become my least favorite holiday. 

Look, I need to tell you all, this mothering thing is hard on a good day but on a bad day?  I'm just glad there wasn't a thermos of Jonestown Koolaid in my fridge tonight or I would have been sugaring the rim of my favorite margarita glass and pouring me up a cool one.

Kendyl picked the girls up for me as I was trying to finish a project for work.  She comes in and tells me that on the way home the girls had been saying some bad words in the back seat.  And the thing is, when they get going, they wind each other up, egg each other on and think it is funny as all get out.  What were they saying? Oh, you don't even want to know.  Let's say the "shit" portion sounds sweet compared to the other half. Yeah.  My sweet little 5 and 8 year old babies talking like truck drivers. (Do as I say girls, don't say as I say)

So, I start in on them because that's my job.  I say to Vi and Ave, "What do I have to do? Wash your mouths out with soap? You know you aren't supposed to talk like that. You know."  I rant, I rave.  I am outside my body watching my mother possess me and say all the things my mother would have said to me.  Only my mom didn't just threaten the bar of soap, oh no.  But here I was, being her to my girls.  No, I was being me. ME.  UGH.  Then I tell them to go clean their room without a peep- no talking to each other.  So, seems like things are going okay and I lift the no talking rule and put Vi in charge of the effort.  In my head I'm thinking it will be a good chance for her to see wat it is like for me trying to get them to do things like clean their room.  Well, she ends up trying to coerce Ave into doing what she wants by threatening to throw the rose I gave Ave(which she so carefully put in a vase on her windowsill in the sun with water and said "I'll take very, very good care of it Mommy")out the window.  Well, Vi finally threw the rose out the window. Ave comes out crying.  I make Ave and Vi go retrieve the rose at which point all 5 dogs come gallumping through the kitchen into the dining room and Boo freaks out, rolls over on his back and sprays pee all over me and the other dogs.  Did I mention he has a submissive peeing problem?  Vi is laughing hysterically which just proceeds to piss me off, so she gets stuck with clean up duty while I herd the dogs out.

Dean comes in and somehow he and Vi end up in the middle of it again over why she threw he rose out the window.  He starts threatening her that he's going to take her on a walk... he loves to have a little death march around the block, in the dark, as means of punishment.  Gee, where does she learn the whole threat tactic as a way to get Ave to do her bidding?  See, I like to go for a walk, so I resent this because I think it makes the girls associate the physical activity of walking with punishment whereas tv is a reward.  Doesn't seem right to me.  I find myself defending Viola and challenging Dean on his whole walk-as-a-way-to-torture-the-children program.  Anyhow.  Vi goes in to Ave and tells her loudly so I can hear, "Maybe I would rather go on a walk with Papa than get my mouth washed out with soap by Mama."  Real snarky-like.  I'm done, I can't take it.  I ask Dean to get my suitcases down.  I'm in the middle of what Marg and I call a "shower curtain moment".  Dean is just acting like nothing is happening, gives me a couple of sentences about his basketball game at work and turns his back on me to do the dishes.  Invisible.  I realize, this is what I feel like.  It is that drowning feeling where everyone is on shore smiling and laughing and I'm going under and no one is noticing.  Not no one, one person in particular.  Yes.

Finally, I go in to Vi- ask her if I can come in her room.  She lets me in and I go lay on the bottom bunk.  I tell her I'm sorry for being a shitty mother.  Then I completely break down and cry and tell her I'm sorry again, that I didn't want to be my mother, that it wasn't supposed to be like this.  I told her that when I was her age I thought it was going to be great, that I would be great, that I would do everything differently.  But I haven't, and I'm sorry. 

Then Dean went out and brought me back an iced tea lemonade.  That was nice but I really could have used someone to talk to, maybe even a hug.  And here I am, on the computer because I have to have some comfort right now, some way to feel better. 

And now I think, if this was a horse I would have just fallen off.  And what would I do?  I would brush myself off, and get back on and walk.  So, I guess that's what I have to do now.  First, walk. Walk.  That's all I have to do.

Okay. I'm going to go walk now. (Did I mention this is hard and it sucks? And I'd get bucked off a horse any day rather than this?)  Probably left some details out but you get it, rough night here for me.

At least there's this:

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Comments

[melissa]

Well, I'm not Dean, but here's a virtual hug. I hope you have a better day tomorrow. And for what it's worth, I thought you did pretty good today. I think the discipline thing is the hardest part of parenting. Poor Boo. I have a wonderful dog who did submissive peeing for about 2.5 years. Then she stopped. Beams. Melissa

[Amy]

Good to know it might go away! He doesn't do it unless you go right up to him... so I always try to be calm and let him come to me and get comfortable. Hell, we have granite and wood floors throughout the house now so I don't even care. Boo is a great little guy. Thank you for your hu and kind words- the discipline is tough. I think about it like with the horses- set them up to succeed because the less discipline the better. I'd rather have kids that want to be coopertaive than ones that have to be punished into behaving 'correctly' or whatever.. :)
Beams back at ya!