day two

Jane is posting all things thankful for NaBloPoMo, and I think that's so admirable.  I would totally do the same if I was a good person, but alas, we've all met me.  Growlgrumblegrumble.

The husband is out of town, starting this morning.  This is no biggie - even when he doesn't leave town sometimes he is so busy with working and bishoping that some weeks he leaves home before 6am and doesn't come home until 10pm.  It's not ideal, but I gots this parenting thing.  I'm good.

I discovered something this morning though, that I do NOT gots.  I can take the kids to the Supper with Santa, trick or treating at the nursing home, mid-day school plays, library story time, and can get out with minimal damage.  Okay, library time is actually pretty close to utter chaos, but they let us come back, so I'm counting it as a win. But you know what I cannot and should not do solo?  Stake conference.  Oh boy.

For those not in the Mormoning, it's a semi-annual weekend with meetings, culminating in a huge Sunday meeting with all the members of congregations in a geographic area (a stake).  Ours goes down to the Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa borders, so it's a slog.  It's just an hour drive for us -and I know that could be worse.  But getting there isn't the hard part.  Sitting there for 2 hours, trying to keep our kid's volume levels below that of the speakers IS the hard part.  I posted once back in 2010 about  attending it with 2 small kids... Today made that look like a cakewalk.

I think my biggest mistake was wardrobe.  I wore this skirt that is just too big and too long, so even though I felt fancy with sequins, it made quick exits with a shrieking toddler awkward.  You have to dress for battle when you go somewhere with kids.  You have to take in account how long your top is because you won't always have a free hand to yank it down when it rides up because a child is kicking you in the ribs while you are carrying them around upside down to remove them from whatever awful thing they just got into, and you have to take into account how tight your skirt is around your middle, because when they claw you and clamor to the floor to get away from you, sometimes your skirt gets caught on their shoe and goes down with the kid.  I literally have to look into my closet and imagine all the scenarios in which my kid could expose me, and dress accordingly.

I sat in the meeting for a whopping 10 minutes.  The first hour was spent in the car, listening to him scream, the next hour was a blur of extricating him situations that had disintegrated into connecting tantrums.

But now I'm home.  I had some tomato soup with very little soup and a whole boatload of crackers and cheese in it (my favorite) and then a Hostess cupcake.  I feel human again.

And I blogged.  It's not rosy and positive, but it's a post, dagnabit!  I survive situations like that by thinking of this blog and all the ways I can vent and release the frustration that I'm feeling - and you'd better believe as I sat in a stall of the bathroom and held him while he screamed like a banshee and tried to claw my face off.  I thought - I can blog.  The internets know.  THEY GET ME.  NOT LIKE THIS ANGRY DEMON ON MY LAP.  THE ONE WHO I CARRIED IN MY UTERUS FOR 9 MONTHS AND SHOULD THEREFORE NOT EVER TRY TO BITE MY EAR OFF.  AND YET HE IS.