Not a Great Day

“I am so angry now. I’m seething. My mouth is taut, teeth grinding. My fists are clenched. My 18 month old is screaming. Mostly because I don’t have it in me to show her affection right now. I’m not proud of this, but it’s the truth.”

That is all the more I wrote during the 2.5 hours I set aside to write this afternoon. Baby Girl fell asleep on the 10 minute drive to Big Sister’s preschool and decided that was going to be enough for her.

That’s not entirely true. She did eventually wear herself out crying and crashed on my chest. It took me another 20 minutes or so of chanting mantra before I was able to forgive her. I know she doesn’t understand. That’s just not always enough.

I spent the remaining hour screwing around with my work email. I worried about a lot of things when I started this business, but let me tell you. The technicalities of sending an email was not one of them.

The doorbell rang exactly one minute before I needed to leave to pick up Big Sister from school. Baby Girl woke up with a start and exclaimed, “Oh no! Door!” Oh no was right. Santa via Grandma via Amazon left four packages on our doorstep and one was the size of a refrigerator. So I frantically dragged the refrigerator* downstairs and hid it in our storage room while Baby Girl yelled and cried over the jolt awake.

And would you believe it? There was another big box sitting on the front porch when we arrived home from preschool pickup. I know I should be grateful for all the gifts. I mean, really, talk about first world problems. But I just wasn’t feeling the box stashing frenzy today. Especially when I’m tripping over all the crap we already have.

A cardboard dinosaur from a Chick-fil-A kid’s meal. Glitter pens missing caps. Five or ten or fifty Ziplock bags, each filled with 3-5 pieces of confetti. About 500 million pictures, artistic creations of Big Sister’s, each so special that we cannot get rid of a single one. Shiny rocks and dried leaves. Old Lego catalogs. An egg carton filled with sand. Miscellaneous barrettes and hair ties. Days old sippy cups and dry Cheerios. All of it just strewn about. Crap layered atop layers of more crap.

And to top it all off is…

THE LAUNDRY.

My neighbor watched the girls for a couple hours later in the afternoon so I could go to yoga. On my drive there I thought about this post and how nice it would be to include a happy ending. You know, something about how yoga brought me back to my peaceful center.

Sorry friends. That’s not how this is going to play out. I just kept on feeling pissed. Pissed that we started off an Active Flow class with fucking neck rolls. The thermostat was set at 72 F and I still had to keep my sweater on for a third of the class.

The girls ate pasta with butter for dinner because the tomato sauce in the back of the fridge had gone moldy, and Baby Girl still felt greasy when I nursed her to sleep. Then Big Sister got out of bed because she just had to show me how she’d put two little Perler Bead fish in her crayon box. Then the temperature alarm on my husband’s fermenting home brew went off. Did I mention he’s out of town? I’m feeling a little burnt out. Oh, and then Baby Girl woke up.

Now I’m stress eating chocolate chips because that’s all the sugar we have in the house. That reminds me. I need to go grocery shopping.

I’m pausing here for a moment. “I need to go grocery shopping.” That would make a fine ending, don’t you think? Do I need to say something more profound to tie this all together? What’s the lesson here?

Not everyday is a great day. There’s always more to do. Don’t bother cleaning too much. Go to yoga instead. It’s okay to feel angry. Make time for yourself. And next time you go grocery shopping, remember to buy the good chocolate.

*No, of course it wasn’t actually a refrigerator.