Velociraptors On Vacation

My brain is broken. 

 I both want summer to be here now, (as in right now!), and am filled with anticipatory dread about keeping these velociraptors,  (that I have given birth to), busy.   This is the first summer when everyone is going into the summer testy and irritable.  And it has gone on long enough that I don't even know if liberal applications of increased sleep, watermelon, Popsicles and water will help.

I am filled with feels.

This was yesterday afternoon.  I left work and flew to the local dollar store to buy a kiddie pool.  Rather than schlepp the entire pool into the store, I looked for a tag to take in to the cashier.  I was greeted at the register with eye rolling for not bringing in the whole pool.  Mind you, I was buying the "BIG" pool, not the one that you can serve salsa in on graduation weekend.  So, yes, why don't I bring in this monstrosity.  Wrestle it over your display of festive charcoal and lighter fluid and mardi gras beads and try to somehow get it facing you so that you scan the tag I brought in to you in the first place.  And then balance it, half on my head, while I attempt to pay you for it.

I wrestle the pool into the back of my sizeable vehicle, folded somewhat loosely into a taco shape as that was the only available option.  Drive home and fling it into the yard and fill it.  Race to pick the v-raptors up with "Coolest afternoon ever...Thanks Mom!" in my brain.

For the entire ride home there was complaint about whom would get in first.  Whom was big enough.  Whom might be too big.  Whom might accidentally wee in the pool.  Why we couldn't just go somewhere with a "Real Pool"....And here is a lesson for any child reading this over a parent's shoulder.  Choose your timing wisely.  You may not want to drop that last line in the car with your parent when the outside temp and air quality is equal to the internal temp of your parent.  You may not want to drop that line when your parent is confined in a car with you while  a construction crew rolls pavement flat.  You may want to remember that your five minute ride home just became a twenty minute ride home by virtue of road construction and just stifle the urge to be nasty.

At home we skip to the children sheathed in bathing attire and sunscreen.  Two of the three are in the pool.  There is room for at least two more.  I only need one to be able to get in.  While I am not a math devotee by nature, I can say honestly, this equation was seemingly simple.  Just get into the blessed pool and swim in the space designed for you and your imaginary sibling.   The one that you are never, ever in a million years going to have.  Because this.  Right here.  This moment.

But no.  Cue the "She's touching me!" chorus.  Cue the Mama losing her hot and sweaty patience and aborting the kickoff to summer weekend and sending all three children into the house dripping and shocked that pool time is over.  Cue the sniveling whimpering best exemplified in an old Bill Cosby sketch.
 

 Cue the Mama cradling a glass of precious wine and her last stitch of precious sanity.  Now sniveling a bit herself.  Counting the days this weekend when she will be called on to keep separate these v-raptors.  Counting how many precious days of school there are left and how many summer camps one can afford this year.  Contemplating when, exactly, she lost the reins and her mind.

Cue the Mama hoping that while bedtime is predictably going to be a fright, these raptors will wake up as the fluffy and evolved chicks they typically are.  And that some magic will occur in the a.m. leaving them kind and compliant.

And so I tip my hat to you homeschooling parents for whom Monday is just the day after Sunday.  I tip my hat to my paternal grandmother and her eight children.  I tip my hat to those who manage to grocery shop with multiple children without looking like a small explosion is about to happen.   Or has happened.  Or is destined to happen again.  To those who can actually pull this off without appearing to have lost your ever loving mind.

 

Uncle.

I give.  Enough already.

So let me be clear. This post is going to contain too much.  Of everything.

I am at wit's end with the parade of viruses that have taken up residence in my home recently.  And as I write this at 2 a.m., one child has not yet recovered going on day four, one child began a mass exodus of her system at midnight, and a skunk has sprayed an area outside my home that makes it quite possible to feel the skunk is actually in my home with me; sharing in my misery while contributing to it at the same time.

I have done laundry at single digit a.m. hours several times this week.  I can tell you when my neighbors get up in the morning and how many times there are trips to the loo in their homes based on light patterns.  I can tell you that three hours of sleep between nine and midnight will never feel like you have slept at all.  I can tell you that there is not an amount of caffeine that will change the way that feels.

I work outside my home.  Normally.  This week not so much.  The guilt that I had on day one has turned into an exhausted sense of failure and shame by the end of the week.  There is no way to give everything to both home and work, and this week no one is getting what they need.  I feel the need to apologize to everyone, but then I'm angry about apologizing for taking care of my kids.  And yet, no one has outright asked me to.  I just feel I must.

The adults in this household have had more conversation this week than usual by virtue of the increased middle of the night wakefulness, but the topics have been on ratings scales of barf and poo.  And whose turn it is to handle the barf or poo.  And when will either one of those two stop happening at such an alarming rate.  I could make a charming pictograph on how this virus is likely to play out in your home should you be unfortunate enough to get it, but I don't have the Pantone color quite right for some of what I have seen and cannot unsee.

I'm so tired.  Tired of apologizing for not being there.  For not knowing what else to do.  For not knowing how to stop the cycle of sickness.  For being crabby and indecisive.  For asking for too much.  For questioning myself and my capabilities.   For the fact that I look like a raccoon with or without end-of-day make-up these days.  It's a good thing purple is my favorite color.

My parting advice is this:  Don't touch anything.  Don't eat anything.  For heaven's sake do not LICK ANYTHING!   Wash your hands.  Again.  Right now.   If anyone near you says, "You know?  I feel a little off..."  Get out of there now.  As in yesterday.   And if your child starts any late night conversation with "Mooooommmmy..." you may as well bust out the hazmat suit and proceed with a bucket.

You'll thank me later.