hindi sad diamonds

I have no idea how, but for some reason, when I changed fonts recently, the transliteration button got turned on and suddenly I could only type in Hindi. But, it took my sleep-deprived and addled brain over 24 hours to figure out why everything was displaying in Hindi. 

Yikes.

म्र्स। दल्लोवय

I have received some kind and helpful comments on my rant, like yours Renn. And a thoughtful and funny one. Thank you, Chris.

And I also got one, which I decided not to post, commenting on my anger issues. Dude, why do you think I blog?

Sarcasm aside, I blog for lots and lots of reasons. But, one of my primary reasons is to process the broad range of emotions – including anger – that being a parent and living this incredible life of mine stirs up in me.

I've made no secret of the fact that I have held onto issues from my childhood and that occasionally through my own act of mothering these things spring up.

Writing allows me to release those feelings in a healthy way. When I write a post like yesterday's, it's as if I'm huffing and puffing really hard to blow up a balloon and once I'm done, I pop the balloon and it goes flying around the room releasing all that anger and energy. And it's gone and I feel incredibly better and saner and can move on with my life. It's much like therapy, except that it's free. And I'm telling hundreds of complete strangers instead of just the one, highly-trained professional.

I realize every moment of every day, even in the midst of two sick kids, no sleep, and piles of laundry, how incredibly blessed I am. And I appreciate every moment of it, even if there are moments (like the whining) that try my patience. In fact, I constantly remind myself how fortunate I am to be here. In this time, this place, with the people in my life that God has chosen to lead me to or lead to me.

I have a loving and supportive husband who works incredibly hard to take care of us and allow me to be at home with our sons. I have two beautiful and generally healthy little boys.

I constantly remind myself that there are plenty of women in this world who have it a lot harder than I do. There are women who have given up serious careers to be at home with their kids. Women who want to be at home who can't. Women raising their children alone. Women who want children, but can't have them. Women who struggle for years to conceive, who have multiple miscarriages, who go through incredibly difficult pregnancies and risk their own lives to be able to hold a precious little baby in their arms. Women who wonder how they're going to feed their children the next meal. Women who are trying to protect their sons and daughters from war, torture, and the cruelties of the time and place where they live. Women who sit beside hospital beds tending their sick children who may never come home. Women who find themselves in the unimaginable situation of burying their children. I think about these things almost every day and feel guilty for every complaint or frustration that leaves my lips or crosses my mind.

I think about my friends who long to have warm, loving arms to hold them, a good and kind partner to share with and celebrate with and I know how blessed I am to be in love and be loved and to share my life with an amazing man.

But, I'd be lying and a fraud if I didn't admit that parenting is a challenge some times. And if I didn't have a forum for expressing the good and the bad in a healthy and civilized manner, it would come out somewhere, somehow.

I am thankful I have a means of expressing myself and the self-awareness to realize that I need to do so rather than pushing it all down beneath a veil of vodka tonics and valium or leading a life of silent misery like so many of our foremothers did.

Crazy

For anyone who doubts that lack of sleep can make you crazy, I give you the events of this morning as an example.

Admittedly, my lack of sleep is exacerbated by a level of stress I haven't felt in a while. However, not having gotten more than 4 hours or so a night of uninterrupted sleep since last Thursday has certainly made me a little crazy.

Anyway, as Scott was leaving for work this morning, suddenly the thought of being home alone in my messy house with two sick children who will whine a lot because they are sick was just more than I could stand and I ran out of the house behind Scott for one last hug, in tears, begging him to take me with him. I was only half joking.

It hasn't been as bad as I thought it might. I did have to fight Brendan a little on the albuterol and benadryl, but eventually got him to take them. Both boys napped for a couple of hours and I did a little work that needed to be done for my new client, and took care of a couple of items for Beckett's birthday party and now this.

Hopefully things don't fall apart in the afternoon.

That Was Your Mother

With both boys in bed (although admittedly, Beckett, who is cutting two new bottom teeth, is whining in his sleep and keeping me on edge in case he needs me to pick him up), Scott not home, and dinner in the oven, I thought I'd have something amazing to say.

Yet, the only thing that springs to mind is the fact that I realize I have achieved the ability to psychoanalyze myself. I'm guessing most of us have that ability but may not realize it.

Tonight, I was beating myself up for getting angry and frustrated with Brendan for refusing to take his medicine. He has the croup and the doc prescribed an Albuterol inhaler for him. She also told me to give him Benadryl for his runny nose and to help him sleep so that I could get some sleep after three nights in a row with barely any of the sweet stuff. Yesterday and last night he amazed me with how readily he let me administer both medications plus Tylenol Meltaways. He did better than he has ever done at taking medicine. He slept most of the night in his own bed, then after being awake for about an hour or so, came into our bed around 4 a.m. and slept there until 9 a.m. When he awoke he was a little whiny, but after a bath, he was practically his normal chipper, super active self. And he wasn't coughing. Yay.

It all fell apart about 5 p.m.

So, now, picking up where I left off last night at 8:19, I have been awake for most of the time since then. Scott got home, we had dinner, talked a bit, and then all hell broke loose. Teething baby awoke around 10 and was up until midnight at which point Brendan woke up crying and was awake every hour from that point on until 6:00 a.m. when he finally went to sleep and slept until almost 9 a.m.

Much of the night was spent battling him to use the inhaler and take his Benadryl. I was, at one point, wondering where he got all the extra arms and legs he was punching me with as I attempted to administer the inhaler. And I was furious.

I realized.... And this was the original point of my post...that Brendan's refusal to take medicine and his willingness to put up a physical fight infuriates me so much because it reminds me of my mother. She was, as I have mentioned before, a juvenile diabetic and had been on insulin since she was 13 years old. When I was 9, I learned how to give her shots because she would sometimes just decide she was tired of taking her insulin. I learned how to force open her mouth and give her sugar or orange juice when she was in insulin shock (low blood sugar). I learned that a knee in the chest can hold a person down, pretty much, unless she's so outraged and messed up by her illness that she doesn't recognize her own daughter and throws her to the ground. I learned that if you can tell that's about to happen, a knee to the throat can stop it.

What I learned last night as I was about to put my knee into my son's chest to force him to take his medicine is how angry I still am at my mom for being such a fucking brat and baby all her life. Just take the goddamned medicine. Nobody cares that you wish you were normal. So do the rest of us. Fuck you.

Just try to be normal. Is it that fucking hard? Take your goddamned medicine and don't expect your child to be the adult! Nobody wants to be sick and if you just take the fucking medicine you can be relatively normal. You jackass.

And so, I realized last night that a lot of my frustration and anger at Brendan for not getting with the program has roots that run long and deep. I just want him to take his medicine and be normal. I want him to learn that there are rules and that if you just follow the rules, life is so much easier. And happier. For everyone.

I got really angry at my Uncle T. a couple of weeks ago because I told him some Brendan anecdote and he said that Brendan sounded just like my mom. I was so mad I wanted to hang up on him, but I love him so I didn't. But last night I saw it for myself, whether it's really there or imagined from too little sleep. And it just makes me angrier. I've never wanted to break someone's spirit before, but I cannot tolerate a child who is as selfish and self-centered as my mother was. My grandparents never dared to break her; my grandfather spoiled and coddled her because she was sick. And I paid for that. I'll be damned if I'm going to let this child turn out the way that she did.

Sick or not, he's going to start towing the line.

Swan Dive

Here's how my week's shaping up...

Two sick kids. One wheezing and requiring breathing treatments a couple of times a day. One with a fever I can't get down.
One house in need of major, major cleaning. A dinner party we're supposed to host on Saturday night. A deadline looming on Friday. A new job I was supposed to have a final interview for today. A husband with a major deadline of his own at work who can't afford to get sick right now. And three nights in a row with little sleep.

I guess it could be worse.

At least we have Duke basketball tonight. Whoo-hooo.