Groceries

My husband must have again decided that sprinkling bath salts on my dinner was a fine idea because I took the two little girls shopping with me this evening.

They actually did really well during the shopping part itself.  Hell, even the drive home was good.  We talked about how they were going to get home and get in the bath with no fits and then if they did a good job with that they could have a donut and a juice box.

Yes, I am totally aware that that constitutes a bribe.  With food.  My anxiety is already through the roof contemplating all of the eating disorders they will develop.  Don't judge me because I judge myself enough for the both of us.

I forgot one fact about my kids though.  Their bed time is their bedtime is their bedtime.  When Alexis was a baby, it was a struggle to get her to stay awake past 5:30 PM for the longest time. (After, of course, she got over that whole "I am never ever going to sleep ever so stop fucking torturing me MOTHER" thing as a very young infant...)  We eventually worked her up to 7 PM as a bedtime, which was rough during the summer time when it was still totally light out and I wanted to go outside and the above mentioned anxiety made me stay within monitor range...Charlie was not *quite* that bad, nor was Elizabeth, but by God, if you fuck with their sleep the demons of hell are released and the zombie apocalypse may as well start because you, my friend, are totally screwed.

We got home.  I took Charlie out of the car seat, attempted to trudge through the mud to bring the groceries in (no attached garage, or any kind of garage at all really, on the homestead, unfortunately) and I had the audacity to ask Charlie to carry in a roll of wrapping paper.

O. M. G.  The world collapsed around her, E no longer equaled MC squared, and peas and carrots had a bitter divorce and are currently engaging in smear tactics in the media.  I am pretty sure the howl of protest that child emitted tore the space/time continuum.  She had a melt down that made Chernobyl look like an X-ray.  I thank God we have pretty cool neighbors and that the old man who lives across the street is in Florida with his wife...because otherwise I am pretty sure the law would have been called.

I unpacked the groceries, studiously ignoring the meltdown like the good parent that I pretend to be on occasion should.  Alexis hops into the bath, gets herself the donut and the juice as promised, all the while Charlie is screeching like a banshee.  In the meantime, she has also gotten herself put into time out for trying to hit me and Alexis.  (To be honest, I am surprised she stayed there...I thought for sure it was going to be a chair in the middle of the room with nothing around and her being strapped in kind of time out.)  I go over to her to attempt to get her naked for her bath...she grabs the hem of her shirt and pulls down in an effort to keep me from taking it off.  I put her in the bath and she is sobbing so hard that she is choking on the boogers.  She never even sits down.

I get her out of the bath and get the bright idea that she needs lotion on her body because her eczema is flaring up yet again.  Since I am slightly crunchy (OK, probably pretty crunchy for the rural standards I live in...) I grabbed the coconut oil I keep in the bathroom for oil pulling as it has proven far more effective than the prescription cream at clearing that shit up.  I pull off a chunk (for those of you who don't know, coconut oil is solid at room temp) and use it to lather her up.  Dumb idea.  Ever hear of a greased pig?  Yeah, she was not exactly being compliant at that moment, so it was interesting to get her into her jammies to say the least.

I got her a tissue and she blew her nose; then she FINALLY decided to try to belly breathe.  I take her upstairs, she snuggling against me and burying her face in my neck.  I tuck her in and give her kisses, singing her the Charlie girl song I made up for her when she was a baby. 

"Charlie girl, my Charlie girl, you are my Charlie girl".

She looks at me, so sleepy and exhausted.  I tell her, "Mama knows.  I know what it is like to have those kinds of feelings and not feel like you can control them."  I do.  When I was little, my emotions frequently overpowered me.  I was my own worst enemy most times, though to some extent I was reacting to things around me as well.  It is incredibly scary to have such powerful emotions.  Especially when you are over tired and just done like she was.

It might be a while before she comes grocery shopping with me again.  And also, I am very grateful for the Raz-Beer-Ritas I bought tonight.  Great planning on my part!

Spring

Everyone I know is all like, "OMG, I am so over this winter and I cannot wait for Spring!"

Me, not so much.  Spring is the least favorite of my seasons.  If we could go directly from feeling like it is 0* Kelvin to the sweaty, humid hell that is known as summer in this state, I would be perfectly OK.  Sure, spring has new flowers!  New life!  Christians believe Jesus resurrected from the dead!  The weather gets warmer!

It just doesn't do anything for me.  Here are my top reasons why I hate Spring:

1.)  Daylight Savings Time.   Who the fuck thought that this would be a good idea?  Shifting time around like this is akin to me shifting money around to pretend like I have enough to pay my bills.  Someone pays, somewhere, and it usually involves lots of lost sleep, crankiness, and fantasies of winning the lotto so I can move somewhere warm and tropical.  Which leads me to...

2.)  The cold-ish weather.  Seriously.  Somehow bridging the gap between the cold and the warm seems so much worse when you are going from cold to warm like now vs the warm to cold of fall.  "Oh, but it's warming up" you say.  "There is hope coming from the depths of cold in winter", you say.  Fuck that shit.  It might be warming up, but it is still cold.  Come talk to me when the weather is consistently over 75*.  Not this 50* teaser shit.  What good is 50*?  You can't hold food at that temperature.  You can't freeze food at that temperature.  It exists solely to fuck with your internal thermostat.

3.)  The food.  OK, think of a spring food.  You can't, can you?  Winter has Christmas cookies and hot cocoa.  Fall has pumpkin and stews.  Summer has ice cream and watermelon.  Spring has what?  Ham maybe?  Easter candy?  Guess what, spring?  The Internet now exists and I can probably get Easter candy year round if I wanted.  Aw, snap!  Plus, Reese's has seasonal peanut butter cups for every season now, so I don't have to wait till Easter for the eggs to get the same deliciousness.

4.)  The mud.  It exists even when it hasn't rained for 4 weeks, simply because of the melting snow.  And it gets on everything.  This includes the inside of my house.  Mud does not belong on the inside of my house, SPRING.  Mud was fun when I was a kid.  It is not fun as an adult when you have to clean that shit up. 

5.)  The Easter bunny.  OK, bitchez, look.  The idea of a fat man breaking into your house to leave presents for you is creepy enough.  A tooth fairy who traffics in body parts, also creepy as fuck.  But a life sized rabbit that hides eggs?  RABBITS DON'T LAY EGGS SO SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THE LOGIC???  Seriously, who thinks up this shit?  Lets tell kids about this humongous hare who ALSO breaks into your house and leaves eggs...back in the day they were actual hard boiled eggs so guess what happened if you forgot one?  No wonder people are fighting so for the right to own a gun in their home...it is probably residual trauma from their childhood and being told that all these strange humans and hares are breaking and entering.

6.)  The tulips.  Don't get me wrong...they are pretty and whatnot.  They also have the super bad habit of all blooming at exactly the same time and then disappearing at exactly the same time, so you are left with a garden full of empty stems of tulips.  Super depressing.  Spring's all like, "Oh, here are some pretty flowers...but you only get to enjoy them for a limited time so don't get so attached or plan any kind of significant landscaping around them!"  It's like those infomercials that are selling Bedazzlers.  You buy one cause it looks pretty, only to quickly realize the limited usefulness and that it will eventually make you and your property look like it is trying too hard to be attractive.

7.)  Finally...the clothes.  It is never OK to have to wear galoshes, a heavy coat, and a thin shirt AND carry an umbrella all on the same day.  You can shove your April showers bring May flowers BS up your ass, Spring.