Runaway October

My chil­dren — They are healthy, ornery and intel­li­gent. My life is hec­tic, full and amaz­ing with them in it. They have thought me to be patient, to look at the world through dif­fer­ent eyes.

My hus­band — Though our mar­riage is still fresh, our part­ner­ship is any­thing but new. I am thank­ful that he is by my side, help­ing and sup­port­ing. He is the may­on­naise on my sand­wich of life — with­out him every­thing would be too dry. 

My mother — Cur­rently she is furi­ously scrub­bing “her bath­room” which hap­pens to be the main bath­room that a cer­tain mostly potty-trained lit­tle boy pees all over. She’s also made break­fast and cleaned the kitchen this morn­ing. Our house­hold would come to a grind­ing stop with­out her in it with us. Some may dread hav­ing their mother come to stay with em, but we absolutely adore her.

The rest of my fam­ily — Every one of them rounds out this lit­tle slice of life that I call my own. Were they not here some­thing would feel amiss.

The rain — While the mud in my dirt back­yard is not fun, I am happy to have the rain wash every­thing away. It gives us a chance to hun­ker down and enjoy time as a fam­ily while drink­ing hot spiced cider.

I am thank­ful that we are healthy, that we have a home and have food to fill our bel­lies. There are needy fam­i­lies who can­not say that they have health, wealth or hap­pi­ness like I can. Though money can be scarce most of the time, I am rich. For that I am eter­nally thankful.

Now… where’s the turkey?

I read alot of blogs. Alot. I think there’s over 100 in my RSS reader last time I checked. Most of them I just scroll through unless some­thing catches my eye, except for the crafty ones that have to do with fam­ily, kids and such. I’m in love with the ideal that they por­tray — happy lit­tle fam­i­lies who eat organ­i­cally, spend their nights play­ing board games in an immac­u­late and orga­nized house and mom still has time to whip out beau­ti­fully crafted projects every day.

I think it all con­tributes to how shitty I’ve felt about myself lately. I always thought that being a stay at home mom would the the be-all-end-all, but it’s really just a façade for hell. The day I quit my job was the day I turned into everyone’s bitch. All day long peo­ple demand things from me:

• If they’re under 1 year demands are com­mu­ni­cated in ear-shattering, heart-wrenching squalls.
• Between 2 and 18 demands are pro­duced in the form of nerve-grinding whines at the most inop­pur­tune times.
• Over 18 and demands are best dis­guised as guilt or worded in such as way that they make me feel like a total fail­ure for not antic­i­pat­ing the demand sooner. 

I thought every­thing would be per­fect and it’s not even close. There’s a least 10 loads of laun­dry stuffed on the couch that I have no inten­tion of fold­ing. My mom or Declan is more likely to fold it than Matt is. I’ve man­aged two din­ners this week, burnt one and have no plans for any­thing tonight. Mom is want­ing me to start feed­ing Rowan solid food but I know that just trans­lates into more work for me because Matt has never fed Rowan once. I keep get­ting told that I’m not chal­leng­ing Declan enough but I can barely keep the kids in dry pants and full bel­lies. To get time to do some sewing basi­cally means that I put the baby­gate up in the kitchen and ignore every­thing. I’m so so slow that every­thing takes for­ever, If I rush stuff well… the qual­ity goes down.

I have no friends, other than long dis­tance or inter­net ones. I don’t know where I’m even going with this. I need a vaca­tion, but I don’t think I could leave the kids. Nor do I want to, I just want to stop being the 24/7 mom for awhile. But there’s mil­lions of moms in the world and they all seem to be fine. What’s wrong with me? I’m I just super lazy? Do I have to be will­ing to just shut my brain, hopes, wants and per­son­al­ity off for good (because heaven knows the older lit­tle boys get the more they demand)? What hap­pened to Me? When did it become a require­ment that I’m no longer con­sid­ered a per­son, just because I have chil­dren? I feel like a ser­vant and a poorly treated one at that.

Well, I’ve already sent a not so nice email to Matt so I guess I might as well post this too. I’m done wal­low­ing, maybe.

I need to get my thy­roid checked.