This is what life has come to…

This is my Sunday night.  I was going to hop on the treadmill.  But my kids have driven me to drink instead.  In a kid’s plastic cup.  With the good vodka.  By myself.

How do they do this to us?  No one can make you mad like your kids.  Not your husband, not your work, not your family, not your parents.  It’s like these little people that came from  you know exactly how to push your buttons.  How to take that one last frayed nerve you have and pull.  Hard.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you either don’t have kids, or your own kids have not reached, oh say, 3 (if I’m being generous).  I remember looking at my 6 month old baby boy and wondering, how could I ever get mad at this face?  HA!  Easily when said face is telling you YOU need to adjust your attitude and he doesn’t care how many privileges he’s lost because what I say doesn’t matter and he didn’t do anything wrong.

My personal button of rage is flipped when they completely disregard the fact that I am speaking.  They don’t seem to fear me in any way.  Not even a little bit.  It’s like I am some chump substitute teacher they are switching names with their best friends to drive insane.  They aren’t like this for Mark.  Ever.  It’s like I emit some sort of unique pheromone that only my kids can smell that makes them completely insane and flippant about anything I say.  I feel like I am talking to brick walls.  Stubbier, smarter, cockier brick walls.

What am I doing wrong?

No, I’m not depressed.  I am highly medicated and have been since G was 6 months old, and I ain’t never going back to non-medicated me.  It was horrible.  I was horrible.  Parenting was horrible.  My life was horrible.  I will take my 40 mg of Prozac gladly and proudly.  I will take that Xanax when needed and have it on my person at all times.   In fact, the highest dose you can take (so they tell me) is 60 mg of Prozac.  I have been thinking about pleading my case to my doctor for 60 mgs just because.  I am technically doing great on 40 mgs, but hey, if 40 is this good, imagine what 60 would feel like amirite?  I can’t quite convince myself to lie to my doctor about my mindset…yet.  I don’t want him to lock me away in some insane asylum.  Unless said asylum let me have my own room and computer with wifi, then sign me up.  Peace and quiet with no one needing ANYTHING from me.  Just some nice nurse to come in a few times a day and say, “Mrs. Jen, time for your medicine.”  Heaven.

You know you are a mother when an insane asylum sounds relaxing.

I think I may have scared them tonight.  I yelled.  Thank God it’s northwest Ohio and still freakin freezing so the windows were closed because it was loud.  LOUD.  They team up, ignore me, laugh and run around, scream and holler in circles around me and I had had it.  My son lost his book that was due tomorrow in school.  My daughter refused to get into bed, instead dramatically dragging herself across the mattress and screaming in maniacal glee while doing it.

My kindergartener has a project due on Wednesday that I was going to foist upon his dad, but his dad got stuck on the east coast because of the effing weather, so no dad this weekend.  That leaves me to put it together, which will be a fight.  I don’t want to be that mother who does his project for him, and I won’t, but  it’s tempting because I know the fight to get him to put any effort at all into it will be like pulling teeth.  So there’s my Monday and Tuesday fight.  After work.  You know work, the place that I get to go back to after a 3 day “weekend.”  3 days because Willie comes down with strep this week, which I totally blew off because I assumed he was being dramatic and it was just a cold, and he never gets sick, so he’ll snap out of it right?  WRONG.  I sent my poor kid to school for 4 1/2 days with strep throat because I was desperate to make it to my job for 5 days in a row.  Something of a miracle during the months of December through, apparently, April.  Or even May,  as G had pneumonia at that time last year, so by no means am I in the clear yet.

I don’t know.  I am just ranting and raving.  Venting.  I’m not sure this post even makes any sense, and you know what?  I don’t care.  I had a margie at Chili’s where I attempted to have an enjoyable evening with my mother after not seeing her for 4 months, and now I’m halfway done with a 1/2 vodka 1/2 OJ  fuzzy navel, so I am 3 sheets to not really caring about anything.  No I am not an alcoholic.  It just seems to be a Sunday trend.  God bless Sundays.  Get me back to work, where the normal people are.  And if you knew the people I worked with, you’d know that’s comical.  My workplace makes The Office seem rational.  They’ve got nothing on us and I have a picture to prove it, but I don’t want to get fired.  Yet.

Good night all.  One day, I won’t be whining about parenting.  Just not today.