Sabotage

I had a David Banner moment on Tuesday.

For those of you scratching your heads, David Banner was the fugitive scientist who suffered the curse of transforming into The Incredible Hulk when subjected to extreme emotional stress. After wreaking massive destruction and chaos, Dr. Banner sits in an alley with his head in his hands. He has only a vague recollection of what happened. His clothes are tattered and he is filled with regret.

The day before was filled with activity. We spent the entire Monday at the beach and the entire night at a BBQ. The kids went to bed later than usual on Monday and I stayed up late into the night to make a batch of cupcakes for Liam's birthday, which was to be celebrated the next day at camp.

Despite my lack of sleep the previous night, Tuesday morning was actually going according to plan. I dropped off the kids. I did my five-mile run. I ran some errands. I picked the kids up. I walked in the door. That's where it all fell apart.

Our beach bags, from Monday's day trip, were sitting on the table. Another set of bags, from Monday night's swim and BBQ, were in the kitchen. The kids lunch bags and backpacks from camp were lying on the floor, which seemed to be covered in a thin layer of beach sand. There were dishes in the sink and the countertops were littered with junk mail and papers. And toys, as usual, were everywhere.

The kids were full of energy. Will was following me around the house, wanting help with his Transformers and his racetrack and his Legos. Meanwhile, Liam was following Will around the house, generously "offering" his help with all of these things. From time to time, Liam would get a hold of a track or a robot and all hell would break loose.

It was almost 1 pm. Bill would be home at four. The plan was to leave for on overnight trip to PA shortly thereafter. We were supposed to be packed and ready to head out.

I hadn't eaten since before my run. I was exhausted and I was overwhelmed.

My memory of what happened next is foggy at best.

I briefly distracted the kids and put the baby gate in the kitchen doorway. Alone at last, in what can only be described as Hulk-like behavior, I ate my way through two and a half of the three remaining cupcakes.

I stared down at the plate. All that remained were smooshed cupcake liners, fallen sprinkles and a few drops of icing.

As I started to regain my sanity, I wiped my face with a napkin and made a hot cup of coffee. I hopped the gate, sat in the playroom with the kids and sipped my coffee-- trying to get the thick taste of frosting to dissipate. I played and transformed and built and picked up. I was doing the calorie math-- the bagel from this morning, the run, the cupcakes. I put the boys down for naps and set about cleaning and unpacking and packing. Should I eat lunch on top of the cupcakes or just skip it, I wondered? In the meantime, I found a piece of candy in the pocket of a duffell bag and ate it without thinking. Not incredibly suprising, I know.

As my energy began to fail me, I made another cup of coffee.

Caffeine and sugar. Lack of real food and decent sleep. Too much to do. A recipe for disaster that I know all too well.

As an adult and as a parent of two children, I wonder when will I learn? When will I learn not to over schedule? When will I learn to manage my time so that I can get a decent amount of sleep at night? When will I learn to set aside time to prepare and eat healthy food, rather than reach for whatever is easy and tastes good? When will I learn not to sabotage myself?

Guilt Free

After dropping the kids at summer camp, I spent most of Tuesday morning at the dealership where we purchased our car. There was a recall issue which needed to be taken care of. And additionally, our 'smart key' had stopped working.

A few weeks ago, it became a little temperamental. Locking, unlocking, opening and closing whenever it felt like it. With two kids in tow, in crowded parking lots, this was a problem.

The huz suspiciously asked if I had been slipping the key in my sports bra during my runs-- implying that this was my fault.

"No", I answered innocently. But we probably both knew that I was lying.

Because I am alone when working out or racing, all of my possessions are locked in the van and the key is usually stuffed into my sports bra for safe keeping. Unfortunately, swimming in boob sweat isn't exactly the the definition of safe keeping. Bill had informed me that replacement of the key was probably not covered under the warranty and that it would cost something like $200 to replace.

So I was sitting in the waiting room at the car dealership. Drinking bad coffee, flipping through Golfers Digest and realizing that Nick Jr. has a way better morning lineup than ABC. I was preparing to shoulder the responsibility for this screw up. For this two hundred dollar screw up. I should have tied it to my shoes or in the drawstring of my shorts or stored it in some fancy running fanny pack. But now it was too late.

All I could do was try to think of a similar screw up by the huz. To ease my guilt. To make things feel a little more even. I was sure that there was something. He had to have broken something expensive around here. But what? Think, think, think....

Unfortunately, all I could think of was the time he had volunteered to go ahead early and hold our place at the town's Memorial Day Parade. Working with whatever was in the van, he used my yoga mat. He laid my yoga mat down on the dirty sidewalk and the kids trampled it for two hours. Yes, that showed some poor judgement. And yes, that was pretty annoying. But ultimately, nothing was destroyed.

Nice baseball chair.

Then there was the pumpkin carving incident of 2008. But again, nothing destroyed-- just a little scarring. Fear of closed spaces, fear of pumpkins, Halloween, that sort of thing.

This was a bad, bad idea.

There was also the time I sent him to get Will a haircut before our vacation. After explicitly explaining the 'short on the sides, longer on the top' summer cut I had wanted, my baby came home with a super short crew cut. Poor judgement? Check. Pretty annoying? Check. But again, nothing destroyed.

Bald, but still cute.

Ultimately, the service manager put my guilt to rest. He rescued me from the waiting room with the service slip which indicated that no money was owed. The official word was that the key 'had a short in it' and it was covered under the warranty. So we got a brand new spanking new one.

Soon I'll be heading to a running store to get me one of those fancy running belts. In the meantime, I've been stuffing this bad boy in my bra.

Ouch.

It's the master key that pulls out of the valet key. In two words: sharp and unpleasant. In two other words: guilt free.

Surveying the Damage

Friday marked the end of my tenth year of teaching. (It would have actually been the eleventh, but I took a year of maternity leave with Liam.)

As I cleaned out my room, I was reminded of what a rough year this was. Handouts and worksheets going all the way back to September sat in tall, completely unorganized piles. Student papers, which had been collected with the intent of grading, sat alongside in their own messy stacks-- ungraded. The notices on my bulletin boards were outdated and the supply caddy on my filing cabinet had been emptied long ago except for a few paper clips and some nonfunctional pens.

As I arrived home on Friday, I began surveying the related damage at home. There are months of fingerprints accumulated on every possible surface and small mountains of laundry in the basement. The refrigerator, the stove, the bathrooms... just about every room needs an overhaul. Cabinets are stuffed with kids art projects and receipts and mystery phone numbers and dates scrawled on random envelopes. The kids' dressers are full of winter clothes that need to be packed away and the front closet is packed with shoes that will no longer fit. There are bags of mulch in the driveway and an inch of pollen and dirt on the trampoline. As a matter of fact, just about everything in my backyard is begging for a power wash.

Thankfully the summer is my time to regroup. Time to spend with my husband and kids. Time to organize and put my house back together. Time to plan for next school year.

There's only one problem. Eight weeks doesn't seem like nearly enough time.

Why Does Guilt Have to be Synonymous with Parenting?

Cara's last post was amazing. So true. So honest. If you haven't read it, you absolutely should. It's what every busy parent--whether single or in a couple--can read and nod their head, saying, "Yup. Yup. Yup. I'm totally there. Totally." But it also made me wonder: Am I a good parent?
Ask anyone whose known me, I adamantly repeated this mantra from age 13 to age 29: "I will never have kids. I hate kids. No kids for me." But when Lizzie made her presence known by positive-izing no less than 8 pregnancy tests (don't judge me: I was alone and scared and peeing over and over again on over-priced plastic sticks in my dad's bathroom), I just sighed and resigned myself to the fact that the jig was up and it was inevitable. I mean, I'm Irish-Italian, for gods' sake, I should have had 4 babies by age 29.
Now that Lizzie is 3 and pretty independent when it comes to her little ways and her little life, I can heave a sigh of relief. No more constant, up-her-butt care that comes with an infant. I could give her a colouring book and some crayons, a cup of juice and some apple slices and I'm free to Facebook and surf the Web study and do homework. I feel guilty when I find myself reading some useless article on Yahoo instead of playing an endless game of Tag or Hide and Seek with Lizzie, but sometimes I just physically or mentally can't do it. Most of the time, I let Lizzie do her own thing and entertain herself a lot because I don't want her to have to be one of those kids that needs to be constantly entertained by others.
I shared this view of Detached Motherhood (I like to call it Independence Through Neglect, a phrase I stole from Gabrielle from Desperate Housewives) on a website I used to frequent called Cafe Mom. You would have thought I said I wore a skinned puppy fur coat while boiling babies to make soup. I was attacked and vilified by the women on there, who said everything from I was a terrible mother to that I deserved to have my child taken away from me. All because I didn't hover over her and play with her from the moment she woke up to the moment she went to bed.
We all know that you can say anything to anyone using the anonymity of the Internet, but the judgement from those total strangers stung. So what did I do? I dove into being such a SuperMommy, I actually started to annoy myself. In fact, because of my over-mothering, Lizzie went from being a cheerful, independent little lovebug to being a whiny, mean little monster. I turned myself into her personal slave, running and fetching and cajoling and begging and delivering her wishes so quickly you would have thought I was competing for some land speed record. After about 3 days of that, I was sick of her being a little brat and she was pushing my overly-snuggly self away, saying things like, "No, Mama. No more hugs please."
I worry about any parent--mother or father--that has devoted themself totally and completely to their child or children. And I'm not talking to normal kind of devotion: I'm talking about those parents whose whole life revolves around their child to the point that if someone glances at their kid at a library storytime hour, they start a letter-writing campaign to the head librarian to get the offending parent banned from storytime because their little AngelFaceDarlingBaby might be scarred for life for getting a dirty look.
That last thing didn't happen to me. I was just--um--using it as an example.