Oh look! I am alone. Sitting in the library. Have already typed more than one sentence and there is nothing haiku-ish about this entry. Finally, my parents made it up here this week. Isn’t there something important I’m supposed to be doing? Like buying lots of cat litter, or yet another trip to the grocery store. I feel like I spend all of my time at the grocery store. The most recent trip brought with me the girls, and some extremely bad behavior.
Went to Stupid Fresh, where they have those silly shopping carts with the red plastic cars on the front. Enough room for two little people to be pushed around and there are steering wheels on both sides. The last time we did this, all went well, all were well mannered and even cute. And this is why I figured it would be kinda fun to take them this past time. Silly mommy. Not sure if it was the time of day or just the dark cloud that descended over our check-out line, but Beenie felt like it was finally time to chomp on her sister, twice. Mimi has a pair of lungs on her, I’ll tell you what. Ear piercing. And we couldn’t fit the freaking cart through the freaking line. SCREAMING. Me screaming at Beenie, Mimi screaming in my ear and in everyone else’s ear. I was livid. And not even that embarrassed. Really, what could embarrass me at this point? We swiftly exited the store, I gave Mimi a special yogurt drink and Beenie the Shark got no special drink. And I stayed furious for hours afterwards.
The days are so very very long when nobody naps. Sometimes one of them, usually Mimi starts rubbing her special bankee on her nose and sucks her thumb and drifts off, but usually both are full throttle. Mama hasn’t had any time to herself. None at all. And unless I overcome my need to stay up late in hopes of finding some alone time and start waking up at 5 a.m., I may never have any ever again. Not a good place to be. Though a small, good thing that has emerged from my exhaustion at the end of the day is a new ability to drink one glass of wine without getting a migraine. Little blessings are the sweetest. Frequently watching telly is the thing spouse and I end up doing in the evenings, and this drives me crazy. TV is so useless. But so easy, no? I found, lost in the depths and dust of my brain, an old love of crocheting, and bought some yarn and crochet hooks* so that I am not only watching the boob tube at night, but am actually creating something. I haven’t created anything other than safe environments and meals for my peeps for months now. Actually, even the safety has waned of late. Mimi ran up our very tall hardwood staircase the other day with a watering can from the back yard, filled it with water, spilled the water on said stairs and proceeded to slip down half the staircase before I heard her screams of terror. Not pretty. I am unsure how she managed to do all of this unbeknownst to me… I guess I am incapable of keeping track of her, her sister, cleaning up after her and her sister, managing getting them both to use the potty at different times in different places, cleaning the kitchen and making dinner simultaneously. Weak. Shouldn’t I be able to do all of that and keep everyone in our house happy and be personally and intellectually fulfilled and be pursuing some kind of higher degree, too? Isn’t that how it is supposed to work? I hear the old TV show Thirtysomething is out on DVD, and while I didn’t get a chance to watch the show so much when it was out originally — I was in college from 1985-1989 with limited exposure to the box — when I did catch the occasional rerun, I was intrigued. At least by the whineyness of the characters and the foreign-ness of their life situations. And now I’m Fortysomething, and can now probably relate to many of the aspects of the show. I look forward to seeing what the late 80’s looks like on TV. I was in another world at the time. One filled with turpentine, oil paint, late nights and fun fun fun. And not a responsibility to be seen for miles other than not getting hurt or worse in a New York City that was not quite as safe as it is now. But boy was it something good.
Will go back to haikus and one sentence burps soon, I suppose. It felt good to spit out stuff in peace. I love the library.
*re: crochet hooks: for those of you who had your labor induced, did you see the implement that was used to break your water?
20 Fingers, 20 Toes 
Glad you got some time. So sorry ’bout the shopping nightmare. And the stairs. And the whole making it through the day with two engines firing on all cylinders without nap.
Geez. Wanna join me in a midlife crisis?
We got rid of the TV and sit together when a netflix comes. Otherwise, I take my alone time out of spousal time. Because my marriage may not survive but I have to.
re: midlife crisis… i’m already there. consider yourself joined. i’d like to join myself in another glass of beer this evening, but fear not being able to function at half capacity like i usually do. i would like to get rid of the tv, but rachel maddow is just so unbelievably cute. she keeps pulling me back…