Gah.

I am such a bad mom. My kids want to play a game with me, but my house is in shambles, I still have work to do, I'm tired, I'm frustrated, the only things I'd want to watch on TV tonight are things I can't have on while my kids are conscious, and tomorrow is Halloween. I can't focus enough to get my living room clean enough to play a game. I barely managed to make dinner and cookies for Will's class party tomorrow. And, as it turns out, the cookies are nummy but are more like mini pumpkin pie things than cookies that can stand up to first graders, so they're almost the least appropriate thing I could have made. And now my kids are sad and watching TV in their room, because I've lost my temper with both of them in the last few minutes, because I can't wrap my brain around how to get things clean enough to play a game with them. And the thing is, the house isn't even really messy because of them. It's just accumulated crap from sewing costumes and David coming over last week to paint minis and having to bring boxes of stuff home from work and not fully going through the mail and getting rid of stuff...

When I was married, before everything turned to shit, this would be where the hand-off occurred. You who are parents know the routine... when one reaches or even nears their limit, the other steps in and takes over and lets the frazzled one have some breathing room to recoup. Well, now that I'm a single mom and David's out of town for a week at a time thanks to his work, I don't get that. And I'm just crappy enough at coping to not be able to get my shit done on a normal weekend, much less a weekend I spend doing stuff with the kids and trying to catch up on work. I turn 35 in four months, but tonight I feel like I'm 50.


I'm gonna go run a bath for my kid and try not to think anymore tonight. I'll probably get more done that way.

Quotable kids

In an effort to raise my spirits...

Will to Alisdair: "Al, I enjoy being the funny one."

Alisdair: "What if time didn't exist?" (He's 8.)

Will to Alisdair: *raspy voice* "Come with me, my son, and we will rule the universe!"

Will: "No way. Talk to the hand. And the foot. And the weenie."

Alisdair to Will: "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Mystery!" (hand signs are sorted out) "Jesus! Jesus wins!"

Alisdair (in reference to the previous quote) "Jesus beats God and God's wife, because he is so, so cute!"