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.
Kill.
Me.
Please. Do it now.
I have spent the past hour listening to Miss O scream at me for one variation on the “I can’t possibly take a nap alone” theme or another. First the screaming because she wasn’t in the backpack. I was laying right damn next to her and she was still screaming.
Put her in the crib. More screaming. Got her remotely calm and quiet and try to step out. More screaming. Stepped back for some pats and soothing, tried to leave, more screaming. Sat with head pressed against crib rails, calmed her down. Moved to bed. More screaming. Calmed her again.
Tried to lay down on the floor to give my back a break. More screaming. Calmed her down again. She was nearly asleep, I stepped out. More screaming. Mind you, at that point it was 2:00 and I hadn’t eaten lunch. Closed door, let her scream, took a few bites of my now-cold frozen dinner.
Went back in. Calmed her down. Realized I have to pee. Badly. Laid on bed and talked in soothing voice, she started to konk out, I stepped out to pee before my bladder exploded, but left the door open so she knew she wasn’t “alone”. More screaming.
I decided to leave her in there a little while with the door open, but she’s still screaming and not calming down. We’re at the 50-minute mark now and I have. had. it. I need to get so damn much stuff done because I was sick yesterday, including preparing for a great job interview tomorrow, and she sleep sfine in a bed at her dad’s so WTF?!?
I’ve gone back in, tried to calm her, she won’t sleep and you know what? She can just scream for a few minutes while I type all this out and attempt to decompress. Because right now? I’m inclined to let her scream until bedtime, I’m that sick of the battle.
Added to that, I’ve wrapped up my taxes and thanks to Dave taking both girls as dependents, claiming Head of Household and me having to claim half of the damn economic stimulus I supposedly got, I’m down a boatload of money and feeling damn pissy about it. He should get the dependents, since he has actual income and probably needs the help they provide as deductions, but damn, I’m just frustrated with giving up so damn much money. None of it is his fault, per se, it’s just easier to blame him than the headless entity of the IRS.
And Miss O is still freakin’ screaming. And I can now add hollering “lay down and go to sleep!” to the list of things that don’t work.
…
Today is going to go down as the day I can’t believe I didn’t throw myself in front of a goddamn train.
It’s 8:30. I have an interview tomorrow at 9 that I have been trying to prepare for all day. But you already read how well trying to get some alone time today went. And now O is awake – again. For the second time in 20 minutes. I spent an hour getting her to sleep. I get her nursed down and asleep, I walk out, she is up 5 minutes later. And I’m going to put my fist through a freakin’ wall here in a minute.
This isn’t even a little fair. How the hell am I supposed to shine with no sleep and/or no prep?
When I was in there this last time, I just wanted to scream and cry and kick something because it’s just one of those days where I get to pay and pay (sometimes literally) for the damn divorce and I just want to grab Dave and shake him and ask him why the hell he was such a cowardly weasel and why the hell he did this to me. None of this is my idea of a good time – the single parent gig blows sometimes, I’ve been screwed royally on taxes and lost a huge chunk of what should have been my nest egg (whole ‘nother story that I’m not sharing with the world at large, suffice to say one small oversight on my part = major screwage in my retirement fund) – and now I’m scrambling to prepare while I deal with a fever and a wracking cough. All of this is his fault. All of it.
Rationally and in the “not a few bubbles out of plumb” part of my mind I know that isn’t a fair assessment of the situation, but with my internal pity party going full bore, it’s hard to be anything resembling objective. I just want to curl up in a ball and cry and feel sorry for myself. But O is coughing again, so I’ll probably just have to stop mid-cry and go deal with her anyways.
.
Kill.
Me.
Now.
Was asleep by 10:00. At 11:30, I was awake because Bean was puking her guts up on her pillow and the bed. She didn’t get too upset, and was pleased as punch when I turned the lights on and it woke Miss O, so those two played while I did all the clean up and resettling.
There just is nothing okay about having to clean up puke at midnight. It took everything I had not to throw up myself.
It was after 1:00 before I got both girls resettled and asleep.
And Bean was up at 5:00. I kept her quiet enough to let O sleep until 6:00-something, but I’m running on about 5 hours of interrupted sleep and I am going on 115 hours of non-stop Bean. These are not good numbers. And now I can’t send her to school today.
This week just needs to end. Because my reserves are shot and I am seriously considering running away and joining the circus. And I *hate* the circus.
If Bean was a kid that could just sit and watch TV quietly for any stretch of time, this probably wouldn’t be so damn hard. But she cant just sit there quietly. I can’t even get 15 minutes of uninterrupted peace to just drink some friggin’ coffee and blog.
Like I said: kill me now.
Lyrics from “Fix Me Now” by Garbage
I’m feeling pretty pissy today. I lost my temper with Bean when she knocked a drink over while reaching for something I’d taken from her and then told her “no” over, and I pulled her from her chair, swatted her butt and sent her to time out. At my parents’ house. So not only did I lose control, I lost in with an audience, something that usually helps keep control. Which means I *really* lost control.
I’m angry because my girls are getting the short end of the stick as far as my patience goes, and that’s due, in some part, to the fact that I have to fly solo with both of them so often. And the fact that I almost never get a real reprieve, as Miss O is just too little to spend any real time away from me.
I know that plenty of people do the solo parent gig for longer than I do, or have done it for longer, or do it with more kids or whatever. I know my situation is not unique, and that things could be harder. But damn it – this isn’t the gig I signed up for. And my kids are two of the more challenging kids around, both in age and in personality/disposition. And I am not a font of limitless patience and cheeriness. I’m kinda cranky sometimes, I need my solitude and I like things my way. And none of that is a winning parenting characteristic, and especially not a winning single parenting characteristic.
I am so angry that, in addition to everything else Dave took when he betrayed everything I believed in, he took away part of my ability to be the parent I want to be to my girls. I’m not naive or foolish enough to shift all of the blame onto him; I don’t even want to assign half of it. Falling short of what I want to be is on me, but he’s responsible for stacking some of the cards against me. He’s made it harder for me to be the parent I want to be, and, in turn, made my girls feel the effects of that.
Because there should be someone else here to help absorb some of this. To help discipline and entertain; correct and snuggle. Every time I have to tell Bean to wait for a story because I’m tending to Miss O; every time I feel my patience being stretched to it’s breaking point because I have to do every single thing myself; every time I have to let Miss O lay and cry because I’m tending to Bean – I curse him. It’s bad enough that I have to suffer all of the hurt and disappointment and logistical stuff and stress of single parenting: that the girls suffer indirectly because of the toll it all takes on me is unforgivable.
So I took a damn Zoloft this afternoon when I got home with Miss O (Miss I stayed at her grandparents, then took over two hours to fall asleep for her nap – sorry guys!). I’ll talk to my therapist about it when I go in this week, but she did tell me she thought it would help with my shorter fuse – after telling me that I hadn’t described anything that didn’t seem totally normal (both from the perspective of the kids and from my reactions) and that I should just track how many times I felt I’d lost control so she could give me a better answer. I figure I’ll start a low dose now, and if she thinks it’ll help, I’ll have a couple days of the lead time out of the way, since it takes a week or two for Zoloft to have an effect. If she thinks I’m doing well enough, I’ll stop taking it.
This has been a pretty stressful week – the divorce was finalized Tuesday and he’s already doing his victory lap with Cali Ho (*love* that, Julia) this weekend, so when I’m feeling stressed about being alone with the girls, it’s not helping knowing he’s there playing house with She Who Must Not Be Named. So it’s possible that my ill temper is a convergence of factors and that in a few days I’ll have my grip again. ‘Course, if I were to find out that she gave him crabs, my mood would take a definite northward turn, as well. Just sayin’. Certainly not wishing or starting any rumors …
I think this might be the night I open that emergency bottle of wine.
On a totally unrelated note, a big “Brett, say it ain’t so!!” for my beloved Brett Favre who supposedly wants to unretire and has asked the Packers to release him from his contract. Seriously, if he’s that bored, my girls love football and would be happy to have a “manny” (you get that? a man-nanny? you likey?) to play with them while I cook and clean. I’m no Cali Ho, so this would truly be a platonic thing – hell, Deanna and the girls are welcome too. I just need the help and he seems to have some time on his hands …
Lyrics from the Eagles’ Wasted Time (I’m showin’ my age with two Eagles lyrics in a row …)
Today’s just a hard day.
Sometimes the pain and regret and longing – and yes, still, love although it’s not a romantic love – just overwhelm me and I feel like I’ve taken a sucker punch to the stomach, and it’s all I can do to keep it together.
I won’t go too into it … it’s nothin’ you guys haven’t listened to me whine about before: the lack of opportunity for me to fix what was wrong, the fact he just gave up, that he found someone else and that meant he never really wanted me to fix anything when he finally talked to me … yadda, yadda, yadda.
It’s hard because I think there is still some denial in my brain, because ever so often it occurs to me that this isn’t a bad dream I’m going to wake up from, or some Christmas Carol-esque production where I’ve been given the chance to see what could be before it actually happens. This is my life, and there’s not going to be a do-over. And when I realize that, it all hits me again, like some giant wave that keeps pulling me back into the sea and under the water after I’ve almost fought my way back to the shore. I end up with a lump in my throat, an ache in my heart and a twisty-nauseous-crampy feeling in my gut. And there’s a small part of me that wishes this time I’d just stay under.
I’m so thankful that I have the girls around, since they provide that all-important “big picture” for me, that thing that transcends the pain and agony of this experience and keeps it in some sort of perspective. They help me remember that this is something I can and will survive, even when the bad days catch my be surprise and make me doubt how well I’m doing. And they give me that little crutch – where if I’m not sure I can or will survive for myself, I am damn sure I can and will for them.
I’ll renege a little on the whole “I won’t go too into it” spiel for this one thing: Dave told me, back when this started, that he couldn’t use the girls as a reason to work on our marriage. At the time, I thought I understood that, but now I’m calling bullshit. It would have been totally alright for him to use them as the thing that motivated him to do the work. Staying for them wouldn’t have been right, if after the work he’d decided that they were all that would keep him here. But having them be the reason he gave his marriage a chance … I don’t see the harm in that.
Aaauuuggghhh! (Said in my best Charlie Brown voice) I’m supposed to be able to decide to not dwell on this kind of shit, but it’s really hard to just compartmentalize and turn off the emotions and the thoughts.
Kids. I’ll talk about the kids.
I think the whole single parent thing would be a brazillion times easier if I could get a streamlined, consistent bedtime routine going. But it’s taking two hours to get Miss O to sleep, and that’s hard to do with Miss I here. Here’s how it went down tonight. I usually try to start bedtime for her around 7:00, but she was falling apart at 6:00, and since I knew she wouldn’t be asleep for a while, I just started early.
6:00 – lay down to nurse
6:10 – she’s up and playing
6:20 – she’s crying hysterically, lay down and nurse again
6:30 – she’s up and watching her mobile
6:45 – more hysterical crying, nurse again
7:00 – up again, watching mobile, I read her some books
7:15 – crying again, nurse again
7:45 – she’s asleep – I slip out
7:50 – she’s noticed I’m gone, commence crying, I return
8:00 – she’s tossed, turned and fussed herself to sleep
It’s just insane; I end up basically *having* to let her cry at a few points, because she nurses for awhile, loses interest, flashes a huge grin and starts screwing around. The only “cure” I’ve found is letting her entertain herself until she’s over it and starts crying – and then I get to start round 2 (or 3). I really hate making her cry, I just don’t know what else to do.
Have any of y’all been through a similar bedtime … well, I’d say routine, but that implies it’s something we developed together, and this is just me at the mercy of a tiny and cute dictator. So we’ll say a similar bedtime experience.
Miss O has started solids, in spite of my “no spoon-feeding, and definitely no cereal” thoughts of the past few months. She’s been grabbing at my food for a while, so I made her a little cereal the other day. As soon as the spoon was near her, she grabbed it and shoved it in her mouth. So now she gets some cereal most days.
I’ve started doing her hair a la Pebbles sometimes to keep all the bangs out of her eyes.
Bean is a total dynamo, and has the listening skills of a three-year-old. Oh wait … She’s such an outgoing and sweet kid, making friends (whether they like it or not) wherever she goes. We were at the grocery store the other day, and there was a young boy on our aisle. Bean looked at me and said “Mommy? Who’s my new friend?” At the post office the next day, she immediately started playing with a two-year-old boy in line with his mom; today at Ikea, she tried to play with every kid she saw. It breaks my heart when the kids that she approaches either ignore her or or rude to her, because she just wants to befriend *everyone*.
Last week we made cupcakes for Father’s Day – Bean LOVED them, especially the chocolate frosting.
She ate the last one today, and I skipped the frosting. She still found a way to make a huge mess.
Lyrics from Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black
To quote Bean, “I’m having a bad day”
Or at least I was when I started this this morning … as the day went on (and Bean went to Grandma and Grandpa’s), I did manage to feel a bit more in control.
I’m just so stressed and over it and feeling sorry for myself today. The cats are puking and crapping all over the house because I can’t afford to keep them in raw food all the time, and, stupid me, I gave them a big bowl of dry food. So they overeat and puke everywhere, and then they all get diarrhea so there’s cat sh*t everywhere. Freakin’ everywhere and my house stinks and I’m so damn over them I want to throw them all out the door. But I won’t, because that’ll just be one more thing for me to feel bad and guilty about.
Bean spilled juice-milk everywhere, so now I have two huge areas on my floors where your feet stick and squelch when you walk over them. I almost blew a gasket when I came out of my room (door is shut so I have one sh*t-free zone) and saw the huge puddle that she’d made by splashing around in the already big enough puddle.
I’m probably going to go back on the damn Zoloft, but since I’m stuck trying to find individual insurance, I don’t want to be on an antidepressant, ya know? But I’m hoping it’ll take the edge back off for me and allow me to regroup … I’ve been so stressed and edgy and irritable with the girls that something’s gotta give, and mommy’s not wanting to use a crutch is the easiest thing to start with. Maybe I’ll be able to start running sooner rather than later, and that’ll be enough.
Today’s Beanism, said to grandma after grandma used the n-word (nap): “Understand my words: no nap”
I’ve gotta get a handle on Miss O’s sleep … tonight was another hour and a half of nurse – settle – awaken – play – fuss – cry/holler – nurse – settle – awaken – play – fuss – cry/holler – nurse, until she finally stayed asleep around 8:30. It’s a pain in the ass to manage when it’s just her and I, but when you add Bean to the mix it’s downright maddening. I flat out refuse to “let” her ‘cry it out’, but she’s so different from Bean. For Bean, boobie + bed = out cold, and I wish to heck Miss O would follow that same path! I’m going to break out the “No Cry Sleep Solution” to see if I can get anywhere with that …
Lyrics from Veruca Salt’s “Disconnected“
Oh – and the “you” in the song lyric is not directed at anyone 
I am so sick of taking a beating from Dave for what I post here. I’ve heard from so many of you that I shouldn’t let that affect what I post, that you think others can/do benefit from my emotional purging, that I’m handling things better than I could be …
So does anyone agree with him? That what I’m publishing here is hurtful and nasty? Is anything I’m saying unjust or really horrible? You can email me or respond in the comments, but if you think there are things I’m being unfair about or that he has a right to take umbrage at what I’m posting, please, tell me. To my way of thinking, I’m just putting out my raw emotion – emotion that wouldn’t be there to vent if I wasn’t in this situation – and if he doesn’t like to read it, the solution is simple – don’t read it.
Is it wrong of me to put all this out here?
Today I read this column from Carolyn Hax, my favorite advice columnist. Actually, calling her my favorite is a bit misleading, as I don’t really read advice columns, and haven’t seen hers in years. But I just started getting the paper on Saturdays, and this was today’s column. When we lived in Raleigh, I read her column often.
Apropos, no? My favorite quote from there: “You’re not just her husband, but a father now. People who make babies surrender their right to behave like them.”
Earlier, I was watching a Grey’s Anatomy episode where Dr. Bailey is talking about her husband leaving her and how she hasn’t slept alone in 12 years – and I got all choked up. I lost my partner, my confidant, my co-conspirator, my best friend, my shoulder, my lover, my sidekick (and whatever the person who *has* a sidekick is called), my husband, my bedmate (in theory, at least, since the girls have been cosleeping since they were born).
And he was surprised when I told him I was still processing and working through so many feelings for him, that I still hadn’t stopped loving my husband. Yes I’m angry, hurt, betrayed … but I’ve got 12 years of love I don’t know what to do with. It doesn’t just go away overnight. Nor does the urge to talk to him about everything, to call him for no reason, to share funny or weird things with him …
I’m on my own for a few days, while Dave travels to California “on business” .. yeah, yeah, he’s going for training. But the fact that he’ll be spending the weekend in Ho-ville has left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth.
Actually, “Ho” is probably too strong a word, I’m just endeavoring not to give out her name or location. We’ll just call her Mariah, after a singer who I feel the same way about: if a Hellmouth were to open up under her home and suck her into an alternate world without shrimp (or nothing but shrimp), I wouldn’t be shedding any tears
I asked him not to see her while he’s there. He refused. He thinks it send the wrong message to both of us (he and I) if he complies with my request. That it prolongs the separation process, yadda, yadda, yadda. Dave, I know you’re reading this, and you’re probably going to be pissy about my blogging about this, but I’m not going to change what and how I blog. Sorry.
It hurts like hell that he cannot give our 12 year relationship – or me – more respect than this. He’d argue that since he’s realized he hasn’t really been in the marriage for some time, it’s not like that for him. I’d respond that he had the luxury and security of my (apparently unrequited) love, respect and friendship to fall back on while he disengaged – that I deserve a little compassion and respect myself since I just had it all thrust upon me 4-5 months ago.
Regardless, he feels that he doesn’t owe me that, that he only owes himself his happiness. Nice, huh? Oh, and, he likes to remind me he’s still a nice guy. Yeah – to anyone that isn’t me. Where I’m concerned, it’s piss up a rope time because apparently anything resembling kindness or compassion would just confuse me into thinking he didn’t really want a divorce.
Anyways …
It was a rough night here. Miss O just couldn’t/wouldn’t settle down, so it took a good hour to get her to sleep. An hour filled with tons of crying, mommy losing her cool with Miss O *and* Miss I, a battle yell from me that scared Miss O into absolute histrionics and me coming this close to just walking out of the room and leaving Miss O to scream and Miss I to deal with it.
(For the record, the pre -”anyways” portion of the blog was written before the bedtime from hell)
I hate juggling bed time on my own. It freakin’ sucks. Nine times out of ten, the girls are on different schedules, so while O is ready to pass out by 7:00, Bean is more in the 8:00 range. So I have to either park her in front of the TV (which I hate doing before bedtime, and besides, she just comes in and bugs me every 5-10 minutes anyways) or I have to get her all ready for bed while O’s doing her overtired screaming thing and then try to convince her to lay in my bed quietly so I can get Coconut to sleep.
Once in awhile, the planets are all in alignment and Bean will fall asleep while I’m nursing O down. The next best scenario is that O nurses down quickly (as she did the other night) and then Bean and I can read a couple books together and try bedtime around 8:00.
More often, some variation on tonight’s theme plays out.
7:00 – get Bean ready for bed (brush teeth, jammies, etc) and try to get her to understand and appreciate that she needs to lay quietly while I get O to sleep. Meanwhile, O’s screaming bloody murder.
7:15 – O’s drifting off while nursing and something startles her awake – could be that I moved/coughed/sniffled/whatever or it could be that Bean made a noise. Sometimes it’s just fate giving me a swift kick in the shin and she startles awake for funsies.
7:30 – O’s either smiling and cooing and not focused on nursing, screaming and crying and not focused on nursing, or, rarely, she’s nursing to sleep
7:45 – O is now overtired if she’s still awake, and screaming
8:00 – I’ve jumped through that evening’s hoops and she’s almost asleep.
Then I get to start over, since now I need to get Bean to sleep.
Tonight was just miserable. I hollered at O (seriously – who hollers at an infant?), hollered at Bean (who told me later, “I’m sad because you hollered at me”) and hollered/yelled at the sky just out of sheer frustration. After my shout at the sky, I sat with my head in my hands and Bean reached over, stroked my arm and said “It’s okay mommy. What’s wrong?” I took a minute and just let Miss O scream (hysterically, now, as my hollering had scared the bejeebus out of her) and snuggled with the Bean.
Being a single parent is really hard. And nights like tonight make me resent the hell out of him for doing this to us. I get to holler at my girls and try to make it through yet another day of not being good enough while he’s all “I’m looking out for me” and celebrating with ‘Mariah’ that the witch is dead and they can finally be together.
