On Sunday Nights
Today, I could have earned a new merit badge in motherhood, but I chose instead to sneak out of the girls' room at bedtime to watch 'Desperate Housewives' and let their aunt and father (who slept much of the day) lay down with them while they toss and turned themselves to sleep.
And while earlier in the evening I carved a Boston Chicken carcass to an inch of its life to gather enough leftovers to make chicken croquettes from scratch, I am choosing (at least for the moment) to leave the dining room table in the dissaray that my family members left it after partaking of the evening meal.
I'm burnt out today, from a weekend of fighting with a stubborn 5-year-old who needs to take an antibiotic twice a day to knock out an awful sinus infection that has her coughing and heaving nightly, from spending the night at my mother's apartment shuttling between two little girls who woke up a varying intervals and cried out for me to come close, from the recurring pain of a recently extracted tooth that's left my mouth throbbing.
And to make matters worse, it just occurred to me that another drawback to having small children in your 40s is when you need to spend a full 5 minutes trying to read the fine print on the back of a Tylenols chewable bottle to determine how many to ingest (since the medicine cabinet is currently out of any adult analgesics).
I know that motherhood, like life, is ceaseless, that there are no guarantees that home life, work life and time for myself will ever move in a satisfactory rhythm. I'm not bemoaning my fate at all, and unlike younger women (and my younger self) who thought that whatever I was feeling at a certain place and time WAS HOW I WAS GOING TO FEEL FOREVER, I'm much more jaded and knowledgeable these days.
I'm tired and worn out, and not really ready for a new week at work, but I'll greet it when it comes, take the first shower in the morning as usual, and chances are, probably clean up the dishes before the whole routine starts over again. I might even make pancakes. Cause truth be told, i kinda like getting those merit badges.
And while earlier in the evening I carved a Boston Chicken carcass to an inch of its life to gather enough leftovers to make chicken croquettes from scratch, I am choosing (at least for the moment) to leave the dining room table in the dissaray that my family members left it after partaking of the evening meal.
I'm burnt out today, from a weekend of fighting with a stubborn 5-year-old who needs to take an antibiotic twice a day to knock out an awful sinus infection that has her coughing and heaving nightly, from spending the night at my mother's apartment shuttling between two little girls who woke up a varying intervals and cried out for me to come close, from the recurring pain of a recently extracted tooth that's left my mouth throbbing.
And to make matters worse, it just occurred to me that another drawback to having small children in your 40s is when you need to spend a full 5 minutes trying to read the fine print on the back of a Tylenols chewable bottle to determine how many to ingest (since the medicine cabinet is currently out of any adult analgesics).
I know that motherhood, like life, is ceaseless, that there are no guarantees that home life, work life and time for myself will ever move in a satisfactory rhythm. I'm not bemoaning my fate at all, and unlike younger women (and my younger self) who thought that whatever I was feeling at a certain place and time WAS HOW I WAS GOING TO FEEL FOREVER, I'm much more jaded and knowledgeable these days.
I'm tired and worn out, and not really ready for a new week at work, but I'll greet it when it comes, take the first shower in the morning as usual, and chances are, probably clean up the dishes before the whole routine starts over again. I might even make pancakes. Cause truth be told, i kinda like getting those merit badges.
posted by workinmom at 11:20 PM
1 Comments:
Congrats on your merit badge! I know what you're talking about -- some days, it does seem like a never-ending series of tasks, with no reward or thanks. I've been feeling similarly burnt out, and the prospect of the holidays, and the additional tasks that come with them, is not helping.
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