Okay, I’m going to cut through all the malarky about how great parenting is and how fulfilling it is and how rewarding it is and tell you that parenting sucks Sunday night through Thursday afternoon. I hate it. I didn’t hate it so much last week. Well, I hated it one night less last week because it was actually a night that somewhat resembled a normal night. I actually was able to come home after work and stay home long enough to actually cook a meal, supervise the clean up of the same meal, and do something for myself (i.e., talk to a friend on the phone, sit in my hot tub with a glass of wine, workout, read a book, etc.) This is not the case for me most nights, Sunday through Thursday.
What usually happens for me is the taxi mom scenario, which is normal for many moms, but as a single mom, that means I don’t have anyone at home to pop in the lasagna or take out the chicken when it’s done or to reduce the heat on the slow cooker. Anyone with any experience in the kitchen knows that timing is everything. My own cooking is not really much to salivate over (I have many other wonderful and desirable qualities that I bring to the relational table…cooking is not one of them…yet) and so I’m a very poor judge of timing when it comes to food. Combine my poor timing judgment with my taxi schedule and the result is usually fare that barely surpasses the quality of the school lunches my kids get, which they hate.
So, tonight I’m especially frustrated because what started out like it was going to be a fairly normal evening soon became disrupted. First, I get home right at 4:00 and pop in the lasagna to cook. That’ll be two hours, which is perfect because my second oldest daughter will be home from play practice then and my oldest won’t need a ride home from work until 8:00. I’ll be able to be home with the two younger ones and get something done before having to go get Briggs at 6:00 and Number 1 at 8:00. Then, lo and behold, Briggs walks in the door. It turns out she has to go to play practice at 6:00 not get picked up from play practice. She will get done around 7:30. So, by the time I figure this out, the lasagna’s been cooking for twenty minutes and it is too late to adjust the meal plan for the evening. So, dinner is going to be done, just as I’m heading out the door to take a child to an activity. This spells disaster or burnt lasagna and it chops up my evening like minced onion. I sigh. I take my daughter to her play practice. Before I leave I give instructions to my son to take the lasagna out when the timer goes off. I scoot my youngest and the dog she’s dragging around into the car and I drive off hoping the house is not on fire when I return. I return with three minutes and fifty-nine seconds left on the lasagna.
The youngest ones and I eat, clean up the dinner and then I get the wild hair idea (goes with my wild mind) to clean the garage. Sounds crazy, but I’d just had a massive garage sale this summer and cleared out a bunch of post-divorce clutter. A large thick pile carpet that served as our “Carpet Area” at school when I was teaching 1st grade ended up in the garage when I returned to teaching 4th grade this year. My goal was to reorganize the fitness equipment after rolling out the large area carpet in the garage. (Since my laundry area is in my garage and my cars are too long to fit in there adequately and still store the kids bikes, and my exercise equipment, I’ve given up on trying to get the cars in the garage.) So, my youngest and my son and I set to work. It didn’t take that long to do and I now have a nice clean spacious exercise area with a full set of free weights, three cardio machines, a weight bench and space to use my exercise ball too. As I’m feeling pretty pleased about it and pleased with the fact that my son was plopped down on the carpet in the garage doing his homework and that the place was really clean, I got the call from my daughter. I was late picking her up.
I scrambled out the door to get her, brought her back home thinking I had a good 45 minutes before my oldest called for a ride home from work. I sat down to began thinking about something to contribute to the greater blog good and the phone rings again. It’s number one and she’s ready to come home. I head out to get her after being home less than ten minutes. By the time I get home it is nearly 8:30 and I am reminded I still have laundry to do for tomorrow. (I’m now thinking that should have been going while I was cleaning the garage.)
I live like this Sunday evening when all my kids come home from their other homes through Thursday afternoon when they leave to go to their other homes. I collapse the rest of the time. It’s not the kids I’m frustrated with. It’s the parenting and, in particular, the part of parenting that requires transportation of teens who aren’t yet licensed to drive to all their many obligations. It means I really don’t get home and get to relax until nearly 8:30 or 9:30 every night…and I must be up at it at 5:45 the next morning to start it all over again. It wears on me sometimes not always but sometimes. And it definitely did tonight.
Tonight, I was really feeling that the one nice thing about a good relationship is that there’s a partner there who can spot you when you need some down time. When you just need to get away, there’s another adult there who, if they do nothing else, can at least make sure the kids don’t kill each other before you return.
