I am exhausted. I know, I've been saying that for years, a little over 12 and a half years to be exact. The past month has been especially brutal. I got sick again. I thought my horrible 2 week cold in December would take me up to my quota, but no. We ALL had the crud in January. My husband was sick for 2-3 days, then my oldest, then my youngest, then me. It was bad. The kids were home from school, my husband was home from work. We were taking NyQuil like:
In addition to being sick I started a job, my husband decided to go back to college, my daughter had 2 gymnastic competitions, my oldest tried out for America's Got Talent and got braces (AGAIN), we've attended and thrown parties, I've cooked 50+ meals and packed 40+ lunches and have done countless loads of laundry, driven 3,000 miles shuffling my children to here and there and everywhere. My husband was in DC at some point and is headed to Colorado next week.
In addition to the physical demands of simply maintaining my family and household, I am emotionally exhausted. Having two daughters in middle school means that someone has a crisis every day. I am not kidding you, EVERY DAY of my f**king life. Some kind of meltdown. Here is a short list of some meltdown scenarios:
"I cannot find my shoes anywhere." Panic ensures, accusations of not being helpful follow.
"I'm not going to school ever again. Pull me out!" Some bullshit about a teacher.
"I got an 80 on a test. I hate my life!" Self-explanatory.
"My pores! Look at them! I need a charcoal mask." What?
"You PROMISED you would take me shopping for new clothes! You are a liar!" Never promised anything.
"Some kid was mean to me!" Teary-eyes.
It's always something. I'm always worried about something going on with these kids or something that needs to be done/purchased. I don't know how I'm going to get these kids through high school with my sanity intact.
It's taking a toll on my husband too. The other night we sat down on the couch together to watch a show at the end of the day. We'd both worked and then spent hours cooking/cleaning/shuffling kids/dealing with their non-crisis crises. "This is so HARD. Is it supposed to be this hard?" he asked.
"I don't know. I think," I replied.
Surely, we are doing something wrong. Other people make this whole parenting/life thing look EASY. There was a class about how to raise kids without dissolving into pure exhaustion and insanity and we missed it, we were not invited.
I leaned my head on his shoulder and we watched our show together in peace - a rare occurrence. I fell asleep 10 minutes in.
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