Complaint: Now with 70% MORE Vitriol!

This a post about the day of the poop scoot.

In short, I’m feeling that my job as primary caregiver today is particularly thankless.

While my husband deals with big business, internet traffic and human adult relationships, I am home, in a cold, dark, house, in a cold, dark, climate, waiting for the endless parade of home repair people who give me windows such as “we’ll be there between twelve and four, we’ll call you on the way” who then bang on the door at 6:30 pm when you trying to put your kids (alone, as usual) to bed. Guess he forgot to call.

Anyway, as you can gather from this cheerful post, I’m in a mood. But let’s be fair: there are reasons for the mood. I’m not just venting for kicks. It's just better than the alternative.

I’m irritable beyond words because we live in a cold climate, our furnace part is somewhere in transit and is for a basically defective furnace anyway, and it’s cloudy here. Like, a lot.

Coming from beautiful, sunny (and polluted) California has ill prepared me for this slop. And it’s slop. It will spit rain for awhile, then get cloudier. Then a little more rain. Some gusts of wind. And, apparently, tomorrow, snow.

I’m not against snow per se. BUT I AM AGAINST IT IN OCTOBER. IN CALIFORNIA, WE’D BE IN SANDALS RIGHT NOW. If you lived here, you'd be irritable by now.

Anyway, I was talking to a new neighbor today, who is a physician who just left full time work to be home with her kids this past Spring. She was telling me about how one of her former patients was ill and was wishing desperately that she (my neighbor) were still in practice to be there to help her. There's a lot of appreciation for doctors. Meanwhile, her son tells her he hates her on a regular basis. If it’s not biting, it’s kicking; if it’s not kicking literally, it’s the metaphorical kick to the solar plexus with the most powerful weapon the kids have: their words.

I too heard “I hate you” today. Over and over. For the first (but I'm sure not the last) time.

I guess I knew it was coming, but since I’m pretty sure I never said it to either of my parents, it kind of smarts.

Which brings us to the poop scoot.

Earlier in the day, I discovered a brown stain on the edge of my daughter’s bed. It looked like chocolate. But brother, it weren’t chocolate.

It was poop. From a naked, scooting bottom. That had been rubbed into the bed by an inadvertent and stealth poopy butt.

So I cursed, cleaned it, and stripped the bed and washed everything. (OCD much?)

Then, to pile on the shit further, this afternoon, after the kids were home from school, my daughter had a poop accident in her pants. When I was cleaning her up and readying her bath for a good soapy soak, that’s when the “I hate you”s began.

Such fun.

So basically, my point today is, when you take care of your kids day in and day out, most of the time, nobody thanks you. Nobody really recognizes the hard work you are doing. You’re just taken for granted.

So to all you moms out there, and especially my mom, I LOVE YOU, I SEE YOU, I APPRECIATE YOU. THANK YOU FOR LITERALLY PUTTING UP WITH MY SHIT FOR SO MANY YEARS.

Mothers are freaking superheroes. Thank the next mother you see.