The Simple Family

Every night, around 9 or so, I crash for the second time. My typical first crash comes around 5:30 and brings with it a feeling of fatigue, grumpiness and flat out not wanting to do anything that doesn’t involve eating cookies. In other words, I’m spent. I’m exhausted. I’m tired and all it leads to is one big CRASH.

Even thinking about putting my fingers to keyboard to explain my feeling makes me want to run for the hills.

There are certain things I know about parenting: I know I love my children. I know I try my best with them. I know I’m a good mom– not just an “okay” mom or one who tries her best, but one who is good. I know that I take my children for granted and, one day, they’ll grow up and I’ll be a little old lady wearing pants to my boobs wondering where my life went.

Happy, isn’t it?

I also wonder if I can be a Good Mom and a Good Wife. I wonder if I can ever figure out how to have a clean house. I wonder if it is possible to parent and work.

Most days, I feel like I’m doing everything horribly. A couple weeks ago, I had something that I will cheesily call “My Hopes and Dreams” ripped from my arms, thrown on the floor and had a Tango danced in a mockingly way on it. I stood there with my mouth agape, wondering What The Heck Just Happened.

At that moment, I wanted to walk away from everything. (Well, not my family.) And? I almost did. Except, I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk away and yet I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t stand the thought of having my Hopes and Dreams danced upon again. I couldn’t spend more weeks in a state of constant panic, just wishing for everything to be over.

I found myself in a doctor’s office, my two children in tow. They were going bonkers waiting for her to come in and while I tried my best to keep them calm, calm had ended after 20 minutes in a waiting room.

We talked. She’s a mother herself. She, like a different medical professional, said she didn’t think it was depression but just a crazy amount of stress. She gave me medicine. I begrudgingly took it. I couldn’t continue on as one big stressed out ball of nerves anymore.

While I haven’t spoken to my husband about it, I’m sure he’s figured out from the boxes on the bathroom counter. He’s a smart guy. He can read.

I can’t tell you how many times I feel like I wish I had a mentor. Someone to show me what to do. Someone who has been down this path and could take my hand and wipe the boogers off my shirt (thanks, son) and say “it is okay.” I wish I didn’t have to find out by trial and error that, yes, life goes on, even when someone does take those Hopes and Dreams and stomps on them.

I wish, every time I read a blog, I didn’t feel #1 worse about myself, #2 worse about my blog, #3 worse about the fact that a blog about simple living will never be as popular as my old one #4, that people didn’t constantly have to remind me of that and #5, that I wouldn’t get grammatical errors pointed out by someone with the email Sexymama69.

I wish someone could show me (Not FLY LADY) how to keep a clean house. I wish someone could make my hair grow so I’d stop having fluffy growing-out hair. All in all, I just wish I knew what I was doing.

While I enjoy having the ability to learn, I don’t enjoy having to learn about myself, and about life, every day.  Does anyone ever figure it out?

About a year or so ago, I started making the effort to read more books. I have always loved books, though the variety of them started expanding once I became an adult. Variety is good. It is the spice of life and it helps me bypass explaining the period in high school when I’d read “Chicken Soup for the Soul” while sunbathing on my driveway.

Although he’d probably say it was begrudgingly (I know that’s not the case), my husband has started in on the books, too. He typically stays up very late each night, meaning he finishes a book in about half the time I do, partly because I only get to read a 300-page book one paragraph at a time before a little person runs up to show me how he dumped yogurt down his pants.

Anyway, my husband climbed into bed last night with a copy of David Sedaris’s “Barrel Fever” that he found in the closet.

“Is this real or fake,” he asked, referring to those magical words the rest of the world calls “fiction” or “non-fiction.”

“It is non fiction,” I said, barely looking up from my copy of In Praise of Slowness. “David Sedaris doesn’t write fiction.”

I eventually closed my book and rolled over on my stomach to assume the position for sleep. I’ve been exhausted these past few days and combined with my tendency to watch “Band of Brothers” and cruise the Internet for detailed battles of the action seen in the movie at nighttime, I’ve been staying up far too late for my own good.

My eyes had been closed for a minute or two when I heard giggling from my husband’s side of the bed. I wouldn’t call it “laughing,” no, he has this high-pitched giggle when something is a bit naughty or funny, compared to the typical male “laugh” that he has at other times. No, this was a giggle.

“Why are you laughing,” I mumbled.

“It says here that Mike Tyson and David Sedaris are lovers and are going to get a cat. Mike Tyson wants to name it ‘Pitty Ting’ but David wants to name it ‘Sabrina 2.’”

“Oh.”

“I thought you said this was real.”

“It is. That David Sedaris leads one hell of a life.”

***

Also, today is our sixth wedding anniversary. That’s six years of nonstop excitement, folks. Happy anniversary to my Baby Daddy. May we have six more (times infinity).