Just like every other mom who is trying to juggle multiple lives and still keep track of what the heck is going on with the last days of school, I am getting inundated this week with notes and pleas for help, hot dog buns and special things needed at school each day. I try to keep track, I really do. Though today feels like a big fat failure. (Warning: Whining ahead.)
Not only did I wake up in a cold sweat, having forgotten to do something I said I would for a neighbor before work, but I flogged Tomas all morning, hurrying him into his school’s “dress uniform,” which involves a button-down shirt and coat and tie. No, I wasn’t very patient. I guess I was such a shrew that on his way down stairs he apologized for having to ask for help. Gawd.
And to top it off, we get to school, and the day for the dress-up, coat/tie uniform thing is TOMORROW.
Anyone else having this kind of day? How do you stop beating yourself up and just move on? Advice welcome.
Responses to “Baaad Mommy.”
May 15th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
One of my friends in the office saw this post and sent me back this note: “You don’t meet the height requirement for that guilt trip ride you’re on.” Amen, sister.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
With four kids, I outsource a lot of the early morning herding and commanding to the older kids. It’s kind of like a middle management position. The pay stinks but at least they’re in charge of the guilt and will be able to carry it all the way to their therapists one day.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Somewhere in the middle of my college final exams I ran my daughter up to her soccer game, thinking we were JUST going to make it in time for the whistle, only to find that her game was just ending. My 6-year-old looked up at me with tears in her big blue eyes, and said, “I guess I don’t get to play today.”
I don’t think it’s possible to feel smaller. The good news is she still loves me eight years later.
Hang in there!
May 17th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Diva, you have a husband, right? I bet he was in a panic Friday morning about year-end teacher gifts. No? He doesn’t even know what day school is out, you say?
How is it that we Moms are the ones who take on ALL the classroom party junk, fieldtrips, gifts…? Especially the Moms who work full-time. I don’t get it. And they wonder why we’re bitchy.
I e-mailed the chair of our new Field Day and suggested that, next year, it be promoted as a Dads’ volunteer event. Why not? If their wives can dash out of work to drop off a cooler of juice boxes, why the heck can’t the husbands? (Props to the Dads who read the memos & jump in there and help.)
May 15th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Your dress-up story reminds me of the Everybody Loves Raymond ep where he wouldn’t buy his daughter the expensive party gown that all the other girls were getting. When he finally gave in & dropped her at the party dressed as Cinderella, all the other girls had on jeans, thanks to Ray’s big stink about the dress. Ha ha. Not so funny in real life.
If I spent my life beating myself up over the things I’d screwed up, I’d never get anything else done.