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| A very old pic, but an all-too-recent sentiment. |
Put quite simply, Tuesday was a rough day.
It started out well enough. Nora was dropped off at preschool, happily tossed Doc Bullfrog into the backseat of the car, and bounded into her classroom with nary a fuss. ‘Cause she loves it there. Which is great, because I had worried [slightly]. I drove home to get Susannah ready for a nap, glowing with the self-satisfaction that comes from knowing you’ve made the right decisions for your kids and that you might actually be a good parent.
It was short-lived.
When I arrived to pick her up, I was faced with a weeping mess. Seriously, the kid was standing there, looking for all the world like a professional Sicilian mourner. Turns out, I had forgotten to remind her that Doc (whom she had left in the car by herself) wasn’t going to remain in her backpack that day. And apparently we need to discuss it at length and all have vocal acknowledgements of where the frog is. Because when she went to check on him- and he wasn’t there- she thought someone had stolen him. And since she didn’t have the exact words to tell her teacher ALL OF THESE FEELINGS, she imploded. Now, if you’re a parent, you have the ability to ignore a good 99 percent of your kid’s tears, knowing them for what they are, and how easily they’ll be over. But that last one percent? Those are the tears that BREAK you as a parent, because you recognize your own kid’s tears of terror/devastation/parental failure.
We got home in time to receive a message that my book- the one on which I had spent the entirety of the past year- had just been shot dead in the water. The folks for whom I had done drafts and rewrites since Susannah’s third week on this planet had backed out. I had written while nursing a newborn.Written while in the passenger seat of long car trips. Written instead of doing dishes, making hot dinners, or sleeping in any normal fashion. They wished me a ton o’ luck, but they backed out. Wasn’t going in the direction they had thought, they told me. Hilarious, they said. Laugh out loud funny, but nothing they were gonna go ahead with.
Which is their right. Obviously. And rejection is a natural part of yadda yadda. So I dealt with it in the obvious way: I fixed Nora a pb&j, strapped Zuzu into her high chair with some Cheerios, locked myself in the bathroom, sat down on the floor, and cried for about three minutes.
Then I filled some sippy cups, got two kids ready for naptime, told the laundry to go eff itself, pulled my blanket over my head, and prepared to wallow away naptime. (This lasted twenty minutes, until Susannah decided that the whole “resting” thing was done for the day.)
I decided to reclaim some productivity for Tuesday and, when Nora woke up, I dragged the kids out for a bunch of errands. At Target, I placed Susannah in the cart and Nora happily pushed her [reeeeally fast]. This went well until, at the pharmacy, I noticed that the safety buckle was broken and had slid apart, allowing our little monkey to climb around like no one’s business. As I finished paying for a prescription, I swapped Susannah into another nearby cart, one with a nice working buckle. Nora reminded me that we needed cupcake stuff for Zu’s upcoming birthday. So we took off.
It wasn’t until we were pulling out of the parking lot that I realized I had no idea where my prescription was. Then, with a cold shock, I remembered tossing it in the bottom of the cart before I had moved Zuzu. The broken cart.
So we went back. I unbuckled both kids and hefted them into the store, Nora wailing all the while about someone having stolen our ‘scripty. I attempted to tell her that Mommy had lost the prescription- it hadn’t been stolen- but she wouldn’t hear a word of it. After a few I gave up and let her go at it. (I was feeling melodramatic, too.)
The pharmacy people hadn’t seen it. The customer service folks encouraged me to check with the pharmacy. A gal putting away carts warned me that it was gone- long gone. (Because “people do some weird stuff with other people’s meds” and “good luck findin’ that.) After a few more minutes spent looking into other people’s carts like a creeper, I carried the kids back out to the parking lot and put them in the car.
Then, standing beside my car in a half-empty Target parking lot, I cried again. Big, embarrassing, snarfy Failure Tears. I didn’t know where my prescription was. I had just wasted an hour of my life attempting productivity. And NO ONE IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE WOULD EVER READ MY BOOK.
Susannah looked concerned. Nora started ranting again about thievery.
So I drove to a park and placed my confused children into a pair of swings. “We’re having fun, AREN’T WE,” I demanded to know. They agreed. This was just about the most fun they’d ever had with a weeping lunatic.
Two minutes later, Target pharmacy called and told me that someone had dropped off my pills at the counter: Did I want to come back? And even though I was only a few minutes down the road, I told them I’d be in a little later. Because I know myself well enough (and have read enough Greek tragedies) to understand when you’ve really gotta just stay down. No more driving about for the day. No more encountering anything or anyone who might have an opinion.
And while that wasn’t the end of that day’s laundry list of epic fails, this is the end of the space and/or time in which I’ve allowed myself to whine/wallow.
My final failure came around 10pm, right about when I decided to make myself a humongous drink of something alcoholic.
I ended up falling asleep instead.
But I forgave myself for that one.
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