Worst mom ever

When I began blogging, I had not intended for this to be a confessional booth. But sometimes I need to just get it off my chest.

Yesterday, we had our carpets cleaned. This means that Monday night, we had to move all the furniture off the rugs downstairs and onto the hardwood floors and all of the non-bed/ non-dresser furniture out of the bedrooms and into the bathrooms or out into the hallway. The cleaners were supposed to come between 8 and 10 a.m. At 9, we got a phone call from the company. Two technicians were out. One had rushed his wife to the hospital with a miscarriage and the other was sick. Now, I'm not a heartless person. I have experienced a miscarriage - much less traumatic than the rush-to-the-hospital variety - but, even so, I would have been hacked if my husband had chosen to clean someone's carpet rather than being with me. I get that. And, I have called in sick. I can sympathize with that too. It is hard enough to sit at a desk when you feel crappy, but I can imagine it really stinks to clean carpets feeling bad. So, I understand that things happen. The manager who called me was apologetic and offered a slight discount for the inconvenience of bumping us to the last slot of the day: the 5pm to 7pm window. It really was an inconvenience, but like I said, I was understanding.

After I got off the phone, I began to think what this meant for my day. I had scheduled the cleaning for a Tuesday morning intentionally because the kids would both be in school. Now, I was faced with keeping the kids off the carpet all afternoon and off all the towering piles of furniture. No easy task. I took them to the park until it started to rain. I was forced to bring them home, then. I fed them a snack and put them in front of the tv to try to avoid all the toys coming out and covering up the carpets. By 5:30, I was beside myself and still had not received the call letting me know someone was on the way. Finally, at 5:45 they called. They would be here between 6:45 and 7. Arrrgh! So, I hung up the phone and hatched a plan. I decided I would back my car out of the garage and bring the scooters and trikes in to create a little indoor track. So, I told the kids to get their shoes on and I went outside to move the car. I looked up as I was backing out and saw both kids standing in the doorway, shoes in hand, stricken looks on their faces and crying hysterically. "Don't leave us, Mommy!" they screamed. "We're putting our shoes on!" I felt horrible. So, I went back in and explained that I was not leaving them. I'm simply making space for them to play. So, I went to our outdoor storage closet and got out the scooters. As I brought the scooters back through the house and into the garage, Evan looked up at me - eyes still full of tears - and said (sad and horrified), "Mommy, are you giving my scooter away?!"

Are you feeling my pain? Here I am, at the end of my rope, trying to create a fun diversion for these children who have not been allowed to play in the house all day, and they think I'm a monster.

You would think I would've had a better day today, but no. Today, I started trying to put Pressley down for her nap at 12:30. I finally gave up at 1:30 because I decided that if she fell asleep that late, it would interfere with our 2:30 pick-up at pre-k. So, after we picked Evan up at school, I tried again. This time it started around 2:45 and the stubborn child finally fell asleep at 4:15. On most days, this would have been irksome, but not a total disaster. Today, however, we needed to leave the house at 4:45 to go to supper at church followed by caroling at a nursing home. So, I woke her up. BIG mistake. She cried inconsolably for 20 minutes. We were 45 minutes late to church. The only way I coaxed her out of the house was to tell her she could watch a Baby Einstein dvd in the car on the way to church. We arrived at church with a fully soaked diaper (because she refused to let me change it before we left) and completely unkempt hair. Let's just say I've had better days.

Sorry for the endless rambling. I've said it before, I'll say it again. This is cheap (o.k., free) theapy for me. I'm done now.