Removing wool from the eyes

Warning: Slightly angsty post that defies all the fluffy notions of motherhood. For those who want to judge me and say I'm a bad mother because I have thoughts like that, I guess, go ahead.

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There are certain moms that I cannot bring myself to hang out with. The ones who refuse to talk about how tough motherhood is. The ones who promulgate the greatness and wonder of motherhood while sugarcoating everything else. The ones who will encourage other women to have children while dismissing the difficulties, the challenges and the fact that often as a mom, you feel that you're doing it on your own and occasionally resent the hell out of it.

So generally, I try to stay away from moms like that, because I cannot help myself and my eyes will roll to the roof of my head involuntarily.

Today was one of those days where if I'd met such a mom who waxed lyrical about motherhood, I'd really have flown at her and perhaps kicked her in the shins with all the frustrations pent up from being a single mom to three today.

Packrat is ill. The culmination of a big fund-raising project in school and staying up to make sure that Muffin's last feed is taken care of while affording me a few hours of much needed sleep has wreaked havoc with his immune system. That meant that he has been susceptible to the million and one 'recycled' germs circulating in his office that totally floored him this weekend.

Unfortunately also, my two older children have sensitive lungs and such a bug would be lethal to them. So they get shipped off. The doctor wanted Muffin to be shipped off as well but since he's surgically attached to my boob, he can't be. That leaves me running between two houses, trying to make sure that everyone is okay, has enough attention, hasn't passed out from dehydration, hasn't been maimed by his/her sibling, is okay on the love tank front and fed.

That meant lunch was rice crackers, ham and cheese and dinner was whatever leftover the twins had.

Plentyfish texted to ask how I was doing and my response was 'motherhood is lonely'. I'd realised that even though I hadn't stopped running and was all over the place, I hadn't had anyone apart from the twins and Muffin to talk to. And the conversations that I hold with them and the ones I really want to have just to preserve my sanity are markedly different.

So it's been pretty much a breathless but blue day. Times like that, I fantasise about checking into a hotel, sans kids, eating, sleeping and watching tv without a care in the world and making occasional trips to the pool to do just about the same thing. But the reality is so far from it such a fantasy that it isn't even a dot on the horizon. Times like that, I do wonder whether it would really have been so bad when Packrat suggested all those years ago that if we didn't have kids, so be it and at least we could travel.

The only thing I did for myself today and it did bring me some amount of happiness was to abide by Earth Hour and switch off all the lights in the house. That meant pulling out all my pretty candles and having them lit around the house. There's something calming and peaceful about a house lit by candles. And once again, I guess it's the little things that count and help me get by.

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