Sep
23
My normal morning routine on the days I go to work involves rushing around getting both boys ready for daycare, waving goodbye to everyone as JB drives off, then finally sitting down to bolt my own breakfast and jump into the shower before driving to the office. While I’m blow-drying my hair and rooting through my closet the silence of the house often changes from the immediate peace and relief I feel when the noise and chaos walks out the door to a growing sensation of loneliness. I step over a colorful jumble of toys and the visual doesn’t compute with the accompanying hollow absence of giggles, shrieks, raspberries. It’s like those Nevada houses they used to test nuclear bombs: everything is both right and terribly wrong at the same time.
This morning I got ready while half-listening to the happy din of children in the other room. Riley jabbering nonstop about how he was going to build a REALLY BIG TOWER with his Legos, Grandpa, look, look how TALL this is; Dylan issuing forth a series of satisfied blats and bleeps as he pounded on his exersaucer and quality-tested its springs by vigorously bouncing up and down. I came out and kissed Riley goodbye while he was seated at his little blue wooden table ham-fistedly trying to draw the letter R, I kissed the top of Dylan’s sun-warmed-smelling head while he screeched joyously at the dog. JB’s parents made little fluttering motions with their hands, they told me not to worry, to have a great day at work.
So far this week I haven’t had a great couple of days at work. It’s been one of the few times when all the reasons I enjoy working outside the home take a giant step backwards, and I find myself thinking, this is hard. I try and be a good mom, I try and be a good worker, I try and find happiness and productivity in all things but oh, sometimes I just feel like I’m failing at it all. I’m half-assed over here, I’m part-time over there, I’m trying to do more than punch a clock but man this clock just doesn’t seem to have my goddamned back, I’m on this insane treadmill and the days keep flying by like some cartoon spinning calender.
I want the impossible, maybe. Or maybe it’s all within reach: the contented home atmosphere, the rewarding career, the feeling that for once the word compromise is on the back motherfucking burner. I just don’t know.
Sep
20
If you don’t hear from me for a few days it’s because I have died. Or possibly I will be in jail for husband-cide, since JB is leaving for over a WEEK on a business trip to China which includes an extra couple of days to hike the Great Wall. I’m very happy for him, except for the part where I sort of hope he gets explosive diarrhea.
Oh, ha ha, not really. Maybe just a bad case of gas.
He’s flying business class, too, which completely erodes any sense of sympathy I might have had about such a long flight. “Northwest doesn’t even have first class,” he told me, all disgusted and woe-is-me. Isn’t that a SHAME, he only gets a Barcalounger, an IV drip of champagne, and caviar shoveled into his mouth by sinewy, cat-eyed flight attendants named Osana — what a HUMAN TRAGEDY it is to fly business class.
I’ll be sure to think sorrowfully on his plight when I’m washing up the aftermath of my seventh shit diaper of the day and eating a sleeve of Saltines over the kitchen sink.
His parents are coming to stay for a few days, which is going to be an enormous help and offload some of the crushing loneliness, and I suppose I can take solace in the fact that I can rent all the zombie movies I want without having someone moan about how these aren’t fast zombies are they oh my god I hate the fast ones (HELLO? Once you go fast, you never go back), but hoo boy, I foresee some long days ahead.
Oh sure, they LOOK innocent, but you know they are plotting my downfall. Someone’s going to develop an ear infection/barfing disease/painful new tooth this week, don’t you think? LET’S TAKE BETS.
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