one of those days

Was going to sleep in, after can’t-count-how-many days of getting up early. 

Alas, more z-s weren't in the stars for me today.

At 7:15 my 16-yr-old daughter comes crying into my room asking to lay down next to me. Consoling to be done. Relationship problems. Try to remind child of fact that she is blessed to have these first-world problems (possibly reminding self, as well) and urge to find ways to control overly emotional states every day. Already went to sleep crying. Mothering award - prolly not coming my way this year. 

7:35 a.m. friend down the street calls with car trouble. Not really car trouble. She just cannot maneuver her car out of tight parking spot. Is frantic about it. Get dressed to go help. Can’t find winter boots (decided to be organized a few weeks earlier and put all my boots downstairs in the storage bin. now have to go find and log back upstairs again. annoying repeat chore. never doing summer/winter clothes swap again. never works out cuz always wait too long to do the stupid swap).

Decide on half-broken old boots laying around the donation pile. Upon first steps into slush outside, immediately get socks soaked and walk with wet feet rest of the way.

Get friend’s car out of spot sliding through snow and slush, trying not to crash into other cars.

Go upstairs with her for coffee I can’t drink cuz can’t have whole milk. Damn lactose.

Back at home, feeling kind of annoyed and depressed. Not sure why. Probably remaining feelings of breakup with adorable but completely unsuitable boy. Or maybe just hormones. 

Comedy may help. Stand-up comedians on Netflix to the rescue. Making my own coffee now and start household chores. Each one of which seems to be going slightly wrong. Things fall (onto me. repeatedly.), fly across the room, spill, splash, and leave me in dust clouds. I get sharpie on the microwave (HOW?!), almost drop the air conditioner out of the window, and accidentally super-glue all my fingertips. 

Accidentally is a stretch. Ignored super glue spilling on fingers (even though gloves were within reach) as I fixed everything I could with the tiny opened tube. Had to make the most of it, for we all know the packaging’s promise to reseal and reuse is just false advertising.

Spend 20 minutes rubbing glue fingers with cooking oil and brillo pad. Could go on crime spree now as fingerprints seem to have been removed together with superglue.

Bad wavelength I’m on seems to affect all electronics, too. Music randomly disconnects from Alexa, then bluetooth speaker stops working, and now trying to make a brand-new laptop work, which is just at complete refusal stage. (Note: laptop brand-new but also was cheap as hell).

2pm now. 

Scared of rest of day.

Maybe should take time to do some readjusting = MEDITATION!

What is with my writing style? Probably influenced by Bridget Jones' movie I just watched a few days ago. Must readjust to own prose.

if you want your kids to remember you one day, be a monster (apparently)

This evening, as I sat with my daughters at the dining room table, engaged in post-dinner conversation, with the occasional interjected order of mine toward the older one to eat her vegetables, the question arose about how faulty human memory can be.

Do you have any memories from your younger years? Maybe around the time you were four or five or so?  I asked my second-born, Nini, who just turned 13. She shook her head, pulling her face into a clueless expression.
I remember something! Lee exclaimed, pushing away the carrots I had heaped on her plate.

I was excited to go down memory lane with her, when she revealed that the only vivid memory she seemed to be able to produce was when I supposedly almost choked her as a 6-year-old. I was mortified! I did no such thing! I practically shouted. Nini chimed in, apparently making the mnemonic connection immediately, from just hearing that one sentence. They both then recounted the story of how I once decided that Lee, the eternal "meal-refuser",  needed to eat the ravioli I had prepared, not via any stern or demanding commands, but by apparently grabbing her mouth and practically forcing a piece of ravioli into it. I found that hard to believe. I was that worked up about ravioli?! Knowing myself, that thing was not something I slaved over by hours of dough-making or whatever it is one needs to do when making ravioli from scratch. It probably came out of a can. Not exactly a meal to be proud of. No nutritional loss on my child's side here. In fact, probably would have been a good thing not to serve them this stuff in the first place.
But, my kids insisted that I lost it over those raviolis. They were crying tears from laughter at this point, embellishing the story with probably imaginary details. I, on the other hand, was almost in tears about how monstrous this act seemed to me in hindsight. I apologized profusely and explained to them that I do not recommend exposing oneself to motherhood of small children and working full time without help. Living with little kids is like living with tiny schizophrenia patients. But, sometimes, it can be mom who just goes crazy from stress and exhaustion. .... Just make sure you have an adult (!) partner and the proverbial village, I lectured as I fumbled for another excuse which would, perhaps more successfully, make me feel better.

After a minute or so, though, I wondered --- so, you are telling me .... that you don't remember ANYTHING from your childhood ... the thousands of times I exercised patience when you wouldn't eat your food, or would tell me the meal I just slaved over for an hour tastes like curtain, ... THAT composure you don't remember? Or the fact that I laid down with you every night to read and sing to you and often wait until you fell asleep. You don't remember that? Or the weekly outings to the park or the family art projects, .... all the endless spoiling basically ... for nothing? So .. THE ONLY REASON you remember that it was, in fact, ME who raised you so far, is because I once stuffed ravioli down your throat?! If I hadn't given you this one horrible memory, you may as well have been raised by someone else cuz clearly I could be anyone. Just swap me out.

The kids could not stop laughing. And instead of producing one nice, balancing memory, they thought of another incident, when I apparently chased them into the room so I could spank Lee on the bum for whatever reason (knowing Lee, there probably was a reason, but that's beside the point).

Anyway ... so now I'm really wondering... wth was it all for,  if they seem to only remember the bad stuff? What's the point of trying to be a good mother?!!

The bad moments are certainly outweighed at 99% by good or normal/non-traumatic regular family stuff. And, even if it is just at 80%, it is still a pretty darn good childhood they're getting. But apparently, all my efforts won't matter, because what they will walk away with, is the memory of that one time when I force-fed Lee a piece of canned pasta.