boy. i sure just wrote a long comment and then watched the internet swallow it whole.
condensed version: i am you, you are me. i used to nap, i can't since having children. my husband is a sleep-inner and it causes me no end of heartache. i asked once for him to take the children on an errand because i had worked several late nights in a row and his response was to put them into beds, where they hadn't napped in ages, and take a 2.5 hours nap himself, while i watched the kids. and this derailed the entire rest of the evening. just like it does every weekend day. don't do this to your wife or you might have to get divorced some day.
did you really have a cat die? if it's any consolation, i picked up my cat's ashes after yanking two dozen school party cookies out of the oven and then drove, while crying, straight to pick up my youngest from school, and then cried some more right in front of her teacher. it's not like i had time to lock myself in the bathroom and wail, right?
since having children, i have officially become a number one terrible person. for real. i am a raving lunatic much of the time. i walk around feeling like a piece of first world-complainy raw meat. too much to do, not enough time, energy, or patience to do it. at least i work part time from home, which is awesome for a lot of the things you mention up there, but the downside is i fret over every penny spent and never take a real vacation.
this week, i stumbeld on to something promising... alcoholism. it was after being physically attacked by my six year old for removing a piece of tape from a wall. wine works better than beer. i might have to start drinking when i get up, too.
well, that wasn't such a truncated rewrite after all.
I am secretly glad that the internet swallowed your initial response, because the thing you wrote was perfect. Your previous response was probably rilly good too but the comment I got had me yelling HELL YES (in a café/bookstore that bans emoting over smartphones no less) and all the serious people surrounding me gave me snorty looks as I was alone and yelling HELL YES at a machine. Their teacup pinkies aloft at half-mast with disdain for me as I went back and reread it and was so happy for your reply.
Oh My God, the tape on the wall, and you took it off? Were you punched in the kidneys for taking the tape off the wall?
I have asked myself, over and over again for years, why am I being punished, for taking the tape off the wall. It's not funny that it happened to you, but if someone else admits it's happening, then there's this instinct to laugh and bleed through the nose and say I'm right there with you.
And yes, I drove our cat to the vet two weeks ago to be put down and just collected the ashes this afternoon. It's been misery all over. And yet in the midst of that pain comes PARTY COOKIES. Christ on a bike, the arguments in this house over PARTY COOKIES put to shame any of our collective mourning over the cat.
"MINE JUST TASTES TOO HARD." Oh, my God, it's a cookie I just gave you. I was trying to do something nice with the party cookie. Please stop banging your skull on the floor.
They don't know that I lock myself in the bathroom and just cry and cry and cry.
I've been on the LJ for something like ten years or more and tend to keep my cards close to my chest, thinking of it all as a grand writing exercise. There's a group of loyal friends out there, and they read and reply, but a lot of them have no kids, or have kids who've grown. Add Facebook into the mix and it gets more complicated - some of them are raising their kids according to some rarefied set of beliefs and higher principles I'll never understand, in which everything is beautiful and everyone is blessed and lucky. And so I try to downplay the whole "I've gone insane" thing because I don't want to ruin anyone else's good time.
But now and then, I go and ramble on about what's really happening, all the difficulty.
And those ripe and rancid posts just die on the vine. Nobody wants to read about that kind of stuff. Uncomfortable silence for a few days, then I lock it up behind every firewall I can manage.
condensed version: i am you, you are me. i used to nap, i can't since having children. my husband is a sleep-inner and it causes me no end of heartache. i asked once for him to take the children on an errand because i had worked several late nights in a row and his response was to put them into beds, where they hadn't napped in ages, and take a 2.5 hours nap himself, while i watched the kids. and this derailed the entire rest of the evening. just like it does every weekend day. don't do this to your wife or you might have to get divorced some day.
did you really have a cat die? if it's any consolation, i picked up my cat's ashes after yanking two dozen school party cookies out of the oven and then drove, while crying, straight to pick up my youngest from school, and then cried some more right in front of her teacher. it's not like i had time to lock myself in the bathroom and wail, right?
since having children, i have officially become a number one terrible person. for real. i am a raving lunatic much of the time. i walk around feeling like a piece of first world-complainy raw meat. too much to do, not enough time, energy, or patience to do it. at least i work part time from home, which is awesome for a lot of the things you mention up there, but the downside is i fret over every penny spent and never take a real vacation.
this week, i stumbeld on to something promising... alcoholism. it was after being physically attacked by my six year old for removing a piece of tape from a wall. wine works better than beer. i might have to start drinking when i get up, too.
well, that wasn't such a truncated rewrite after all.
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Oh My God, the tape on the wall, and you took it off? Were you punched in the kidneys for taking the tape off the wall?
I have asked myself, over and over again for years, why am I being punished, for taking the tape off the wall. It's not funny that it happened to you, but if someone else admits it's happening, then there's this instinct to laugh and bleed through the nose and say I'm right there with you.
And yes, I drove our cat to the vet two weeks ago to be put down and just collected the ashes this afternoon. It's been misery all over. And yet in the midst of that pain comes PARTY COOKIES. Christ on a bike, the arguments in this house over PARTY COOKIES put to shame any of our collective mourning over the cat.
"MINE JUST TASTES TOO HARD." Oh, my God, it's a cookie I just gave you. I was trying to do something nice with the party cookie. Please stop banging your skull on the floor.
They don't know that I lock myself in the bathroom and just cry and cry and cry.
I've been on the LJ for something like ten years or more and tend to keep my cards close to my chest, thinking of it all as a grand writing exercise. There's a group of loyal friends out there, and they read and reply, but a lot of them have no kids, or have kids who've grown. Add Facebook into the mix and it gets more complicated - some of them are raising their kids according to some rarefied set of beliefs and higher principles I'll never understand, in which everything is beautiful and everyone is blessed and lucky. And so I try to downplay the whole "I've gone insane" thing because I don't want to ruin anyone else's good time.
But now and then, I go and ramble on about what's really happening, all the difficulty.
And those ripe and rancid posts just die on the vine. Nobody wants to read about that kind of stuff. Uncomfortable silence for a few days, then I lock it up behind every firewall I can manage.
So, thank you, so much.
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