Mommy Guilt

For all of the guilt I heap upon myself, I should be Jewish.  Or Italian.  Or some sort of ethnicity.  I am the Queen of Guilt.  If I am sick and resting in bed, I think about the walls of laundry stacked around me, and my youngest who is downstairs watching his fourth straight episode of Backyardigans.  We should be reading A Christmas Carol, or singing songs, or playing a game.  I should be doing my work, or cleaning the house, making dinner - something productive.  Idle hands make... what is the phrase?

But then I recall why I am still in bed at 10a.  Perhaps it is because yesterday I went to the DMV (only to find it closed), shuttled children to school, went Christmas shopping for my mother-in-law's gift to my kids, visited said MIL, picked up the kids' photos, picked up a present for my husband, created and picked up the Christmas cards, stopped by Target to pick up prescriptions and a few necessities, and capped off the night with a visit to my father, who is in the hospital.  And then came home and graded a few papers after tucking the children into bed.  Oh, and did I mention the hours on the phone setting up doctors' appointments for said father, and calling around to six different stores to find a Pillow Pet for my oldest?

My mother had four children and did about half of that on a regular basis, but somehow she managed not to guilt herself into oblivion.  If I'm working I think about what a lousy mother I am.  If I'm not working, I think about how my career is in the toilet, we don't make enough money, and my husband is shouldering too much of the income burden.  We rush about, trying to plug holes in the walls, but still the water comes streaming through.

There is, clearly, a better way.  But I'll be darned if I can find it.  I continue to do the best I can but it's not nearly good enough, and it is making me miserable.  I pray and I pray but I cannot figure out where God wants me to be, what He wants me to do, and where I should focus.  If I could have one Christmas wish, it would be to reintroduce focus in my life.  Instead I am here, there, everywhere all at once, and nowhere at the same time.  Frazzled, tired, guilty as charged.

December Colds

A few weeks ago, I was sick.  I think.  I had a cough, headache, felt like crap - the usual "I'm doing too much and my body rebels" sick.  Then my oldest had it, then I had it again, then my youngest, now I have it again.... this is how things go in my house.  It's part of the pattern of winter.  Just like we will twist our hands in angst to see how far we can stretch the oil delivery, and watch UConn basketball on TV while decrying the high cost of cable.  This is what we do.  It's long and cold up here in the winter, and I inevitably get sick.

It's not a big deal - I go to bed and usually am up and at 'em the next day, hacking a loogie now and then.  Only last night I was waking myself up coughing and I woke hubby up, and when hubby is woken up now it is a PROBLEM THAT MUST BE SOLVED.  He declared today that I've been sick for forever (close, but not true) and that I should SEE SOMEONE.

Ok, let's think about this.  The last time he thought I should see someone was last week when my smashed finger wasn't getting any better.  I took an hour out of my crazy day to see my doctor, who ordered an x-ray and gave me a splint that was moderately better than the cheap one I bought at CVS.  So for $300, I got confirmation that it isn't broken.  Thanks.

I could call my doctor today - maybe she'd order a chest X-ray!  That would be at least $600 plus her visit to tell me that.... drum roll please... I'm exhausted and have a virus.  It's the virus that's "going around."  I should rest, drink fluids, and take it easy.

For once when I'm sick I would just like to be able to rest, take it easy, and not have my family pile on guilt about me being out of commission for a day or two.  I realize it is out of concern, and I have my own issues about sickness, but still!  Make me some darned soup, bring up a carafe of herbal tea and a box of tissues, and let me sleep while you watch the kids.  Or the kids watch Netflix.  Whichever - I just want to sleep.

I have my own issues with being sick.  Growing up, I always got sick on the first day of every vacation. Which royally sucked when we got out of school on Christmas Eve.  I burn myself out, and then I pay.  Forty years of that has taught me a. don't tell people you're sick, b. blame it on allergies and c. sleep when you can.

For whatever reason I am a full-blazes or nothing kind of girl.  It's that passion and fire that my husband fell in love with.  I don't know how else to be.  As much as I try to even things out, I still wind up pushing myself too hard, and then paying the price.

And the price right now is a day in bed with Theraflu and the humidifier.  

Hours and hours

After he left, the hours at night became my solace.  I would wash my face, brush teeth, brush my hair a hundred times, and slip into bed with a pile of books and a cup of tea.  I had no one to answer to, no one to judge my sleep or lack thereof.  I would read for hours, or just minutes.  My routine became a comfort, a sliver of solitude where I could hide away from my roommates, put away the textbooks, and delve deeply into who I was, and who I wanted to be.

Now nighttime is the only time I have in an empty, quiet house.  The children and husband are sleeping and I come alive.  I putter about, looking at things undone.  Homework not completed, lunch boxes with old scraps of food, projects left scattered about the kitchen table, dishes in the sink, mail piled on the hutch, big piles of laundry, of work, of obligations left unattended.  I am reluctant to go to bed.  When I close my eyes, the guilt I feel is blissfully short, thanks to Ambien and Klonopin.  But it is still there, waiting for me. My patient husband is waiting, asleep, but he glances at the clock when I climb in next to him.  I feel as though I have failed again.  I am not a good wife and mother.  There is work left undone - always undone - and if I were better I would have had a plan, I would have completed it all.  I could be Donna Reid; instead I am Peg Bundy without the attitude and leopard-skin pants.

And yet I think back to my own mother - did she have it all covered?  Didn't she spend her hours playing bridge, bowling, having coffee with friends, playing tennis?  Wasn't she always on the go, leaving us to figure things out on our own?   Dinner was always on the table when my father was home, that I know.  And she was always there - if not reading the paper or otherwise engaged.

There is no book, you know.  No book that tells you how to live your life.  When to get up in the morning, what to eat, what to cook, when to find a moment to work out, or just breathe.  Instead I live in fits and starts and I miss those days twenty years ago when I could find that comfort in routine.  Then I was a young monk-like student.  Now I am a frenetic housewife/part-time teacher/full-time mom putting out fire after fire.

There is no answer either.  You can pray all you want, but God doesn't tell you what to do.  He doesn't tell you that the reason you jump from fire to fire is not because you have to, but because you don't know what to do when you stop.  When we stop, we breathe, we sleep with the aids of modern medicine, but we never really let the space of the hours seep in.  When a thought, profound or simple, sneaks into our brain, we quickly file it away for later, and never return.  It is our own escapism, and it has been this way for lifetimes.

Facebook Divorce

I love Facebook.  My husband hates it - hate being a particularly strong word we don't use often.  But I like playing the silly games, seeing what some of my old friends are up to, and generally just poking around.  It's how I learn about my college and high school friends' kids, marriages... and divorces.

The babies are fun - a big announcement, maybe a few pictures of an emerging bump.  Then shortly after birth, a friend of the friend posts on their page, or maybe it's a few days later and they post a mobile pic of mom, dad and baby.  Then for the next 9 months at least every single post will be about the baby and some amazing thing they just did, like burp.  I have two of my own, and I love every minute of it.

The marriages are interesting.  I've been married for a long time, so the idea of posting engagement and wedding plans on Social Media is interesting but foreign to me.  As DH doesn't like FB and I try not to post anything private about anyone else, I rarely post about us, and certainly not about our relationship or marriage.  But the wedding posts are fun - like the babies, you can see them coming from a mile away.  Then there's that big day where they decide if they want to be "married" on their status on FB.

The divorces are sad.  They creep up on you.  A friend has a few "tough times" posts.  Then you start to notice that they are only talking about their kids now, never about their spouse.  Their spouse doesn't post on their wall, or "like" their posts.  The clear indicator is the vacations.  When you see vacation pictures that don't include a spouse, or a mention of a spouse, or any indication that s/he was there, the marriage is in trouble.  Don't get me wrong - I think it is fine and dandy to go on vacation without your husband, or vice-versa.  But usually when you do, you'll see postings about that your honey had to work, or he had a business trip, or couldn't get the time off.  One trip without a spouse, sure.  Two, three?

Then you see the postings about moves.  A new apartment, townhouse.  A new school for the kids.  Or if my friend is staying in the house, you'll see an awful lot of posts about going out with girlfriends for the weekend.  I haven't been out with a girlfriend at night since I had kids.  That's a pretty good sign that the kids are with dad for the weekend, and not just because mom needed a weekend off.

No one ever posts - "I got divorced today!  Woohoo!"  I guess I'm grateful for that.  But it's strange.  People will post about death, they post about life, they post even about bathroom habits.  But this sad, grief/guilt-filled moment tries to just slip by.

Another friend posted about a move today.  Looking back I saw she hadn't mentioned her husband, or posted pictures of him, since July.  All of the signs are there.  And I'm realizing that I'm seeing the 50% of marriages ending right in front of me.  It is sad, so sad.  And there's really no way to talk about it.  So I will "like" her posts more, and post an occasional "hang in there."  But really I'm thinking about my 40 year old classmate who is starting over as a single mom of a 14 year old, and that 14 year old girl who now doesn't get to live with Daddy all of the time.  And it's just sad.

The more you get over things, the more they stay the same.

I've been thinking about this rut my life is in.  Correction - this rut I PUT my life in.  The last time I was truly, consistently happy was when my oldest was 1, about 6 years ago.  Then we started upon a hectic, non-stop, path which we've been unable to get off.  A huge part of that is me.  I can't seem to let something be.  Every time we start to slow down, I throw something else into the mix that is time-consuming and exhausting.

Today I found myself in bed for the second day in a row due to a cold, and it was snowing out.  Two weeks ago, I also spent a few days in bed for a head cold, and oh yeah, we had a massive snowstorm that dumped over 20" overnight.

I can't seem to get ahead, and yet at the same time, I'm so exhausted I don't really want to do much of anything.  I'm literally spinning in my own tracks and I have a feeling God is watching, laughing at me (in a loving way, of course).  It's like how my dog entertains himself by chasing his own tail.  Isn't that what I am doing too?  I start to get organized, I start to make changes, and then all of that gets thrown away because something else comes up.  I can't seem to gain any traction.

I'm tired of being reactive all of the time, of not having a game plan.  But even when I was young and single, I was still reactive - I didn't really steer my career much, I just made the most of the opportunities I was given.  I've never been good at envisioning two or three steps ahead; it's why I suck at chess.  I'm a smart girl - so why can't I get things together?

Circular Repairs

In the shower this morning, I look at the peeling paint on my ceiling and think, how easy that would be to patch.  But I know it's not.  It requires scraping (and cleanup), then priming with Kill's (2 coats), then paint (2 coats).  The simple problems are the most complex.  Case in point - our front gutter was pretty trashed by a massive ice storm two years ago (not to be confused with the massive snowstorm last weekend).  Take off the gutter and have gutter guy replace it, right?  Wrong.  Gutter comes off, husband climbs on ladder to prime and paint where gutter was, then gutter guy puts on new gutter.  But to get gutter off, gutter guy must come twice, which doesn't happen.  Or husband climbs and paints same day, but with his traveling 2-3 days a week, that doesn't happen.  So we have a bent front gutter on a 200 year old house that we spent a fortune renovating.

Part of bannister missing.  I have the piece!  Nail and glue won't do - must have a dowel inserted and drilled out, then tiny screws to hold into place.  This has been this way for four years now!

It's like me and the taxes.  I want to finish our taxes, now nearly a month overdue.  But in order for me to do so, I have to extract the information from our financial software, which I haven't been able to do successfully.  And I have to sit down and organize all of the papers, which would require the use of my dining room table which is covered with scouting papers and uniforms.  Plus I have a major exam in a week and a half and since taxes are already late, and my exam cannot be postponed, I ignore the IRS and just try to study.  Except that studying at 9a after not eating anything except a fiber brownie at 4p is not very successful.

I am very grateful for my two beautiful boys, our dog who loyally protects us, and my husband who in spite of losing his iPhone still takes my breath away even when he is hunched over in pain and being ignored and abused by his company.  This week, I am grateful for the crews who worked through the night to bring me power, and I'm grateful my father is on a trip so I can get a break.  I am grateful our miserable Halloween is over and that I had the wisdom to download most of my husband's photos from his phone, especially of his dad before he died this year.  And I am grateful to God in whom I have trust that tomorrow will be a better day.  It must be a better day, because today really really sucked.  

Can't even get what I need

I am trying to be optimistic, I really am.  Every night, I go to bed and I pray that the next day will be easier.  But I feel like I am fighting the tide.  When I was a lifeguard, they taught us that when you are rescuing someone, swim at an angle toward shore so that you don't have to fight the tide.  No matter what angle I take, I feel like I'm getting nowhere.  And if I drift, well, I just drift right back out to sea.

Today started with my goal - getting up in the morning.  Only I quickly realized that once my oldest was off to school, my youngest would be quite happy to watch cartoons.  And so, I went back to try to get some more sleep (mistake #1).  I wound up watching last night's shows online (mistake #2) and wasting time on Facebook (#3).  Then after I got dressed and tidied up, made youngest's lunch and got him off to school, I wound up reading in bed (#4) which I admit, was actually the one fun thing I did today.  I did a smidge of work (not enough - #5) and desperately was checking email for a job I applied to (#6), and did nothing to get myself ahead today - no catching up on laundry (#7), no studying (#8), no planning for scouts (#9), nada.  In a blink, it was time to go to work, but tearing myself from the kids was too painful so I left late (mistake #10), no time to eat (#11), and yet I pulled it off.

Then my honey called to tell me that his phone was stolen out of his car today and I realized I had never activated a security feature on the phone (#12) so it is totally gone.  Tomorrow I get to drive 40 minutes with youngest to go to the phone store and get him a new one so that he can still check voicemail while he's out of town.  And I have a doctor's appointment before I have to pick up our share at the farm and then - joy of joys - head down 45 minutes each way to the scouting office to pick up awards for our meeting on Thursday.  And still laundry, studying, taxes (don't get me started there), messy house, cooking, groceries, empty dog food bin all beckon.

So here I am alone, tired, worn out, hungry, frustrated, worried, and annoyed.  I feel like a crappy mom and a mediocre wife.  I know that when I am tired I lash out at myself - and no, this isn't a pity party because no one is even reading this!  I just had a crappy day, from a crappy month, in a crappy year and at some point, some point! aren't we allowed to be a little happy?  

A goal and a step

To know me is to know I am eager to please, stubborn as all heck, overcommitted, and worn-out.  I feel like I am not as good of a mother as I should be, or as good of a wife and homemaker as I should be... and that I use the word "should" far too often.

I don't like where my life is right now for various reasons that will come out as time goes by.  But I want to change much of that.  The challenge is right now I'm am two weeks away from taking another part of the CPA exam so I feel that I can only study, care for the house/kids, keep everyone fed & clean, and sleep.  But that has led to some very bad habits - staying up late (like right now) to enjoy the quiet of the house, and sleeping in in the morning (my favorite bad habit of all).  Deep breath now.  Here we go.

My husband, as much as I love him, respect him, and am very annoyed at him right now, cannot change how unhappy I am.  God, as much as I love Him, respect Him, and am a bit frustrated with Him right now, cannot change how unhappy I am.  I can.  And I don't have to wait until my delayed taxes are done, or the CPA exam is done, or my Christmas shopping, or whatever I come up with.  I need to start today, right now, with one step.

I've been doing Weight Watchers (another story) for the past 14 weeks and have lost 12 pounds and am almost back to a size 6.  It started with just a step and I am rather proud of myself for doing it.  So I am giving up my sleeping-in mornings.  Perhaps I will arrange for one or two a month, but starting tomorrow, I will be getting up with a smile.  Ok, that's a bit much, but I will be getting up on time to start the day off right.

Step one, day one.  Next we'll add early to bed, but I'm not there yet, ok?  

And so we begin

I love to write.  I always have, even though I'm one of those writers who edits as she writes, which is generally a really bad idea.  I also love blogs, yet I've been reluctant to write a blog as I already spend way too much of my very little free time surfing the web and playing useless games on Facebook.  Yet I have these words and stories inside of me that I need to write, and I type faster than I write.  Plus if you saw my writing you'd see why I dislike handwriting a journal - I have horrid handwriting that probably means I should have been a doctor.

So here I am, with words to write mixed with loads of guilt over taking on something new.  Then I realized something.  I don't have to blog for readers.  I can blog because I need to write.  If you read it, and connect with it, then I'm glad.  If you don't, that's fine - it's still better than my writing in a Word document only to hide it deep in my hard drive.  That's why I came up with an anonymous blog.

As I was thinking of a title, it came to me that I really am an AnonyMom - one of those rather anonymous moms who swoop in, takes care of their kids, and swoops out.  And I am also one of those women who have put most everything I ever cared about on hold to be said Mom.  Now that my kids are a little older (5 & 7), I am trying to figure out what it was I did care about and put on hold.  I'm trying to be a little less anonymous and be a little bit bold.

I'm a big fan of Winnie-the-Pooh who, even though he was a Bear with a Very Small Brain, was quite brave and loyal.  I am nothing of the sort.  I'm not brave, I don't a small brain, but I suppose I am loyal.  I mention Pooh not just because I love reading it to my boys in a clipped British accent, but because Pooh finds that although he labels himself rather dismissively, he can move beyond those labels and be the Bear he'd like to be.  Just a little bit at a time, rather like me.

So this blog? It's a journey, I suppose.  A journey of hopefully increasing boldness.  Of frustration (of which I have a lot of right now), and of growth (I am an optimist).  I hope you'll join me on it.