Last night I had a stressful night in my vehicle.  It started when the drive-thru at McDonald’s gave Sophie a chicken nugget container full of TARTAR sauce instead of chicken nuggets, and escalated when  I had to go back through the drive-thru and the guy in front of me in the very long line wouldn’t PULL FORWARD enough for me to get to the speaker even though he was done ordering.  For some reason, this enraged me, and as seconds ticked by while he SAT THERE when I could’ve been ordering them to whip up Sophie’s nuggets, I found myself seething and really wanting to get out of the car and go postal on his car with the nearest blunt instrument.  BUT.  Of course, I didn’t.  I mean really, I would NOT do well in prison, and McNuggets are not a good enough reason to get sent up river.  But I was, let’s just say, unreasonably angry.  I always let stuff like this get to me.

When I stress myself to death, when I DIE of a stress attack, keel over from a stress-induced aneurysm, here are the possible straws that broke the camel’s carotid artery:

• not being able to open a jar
• not being able to open the frozen doors of my vehicle
• banging my shoulder on a door frame
• banging my head on a car door whilst trying to buckle a child in their car seat
• folding up my very expensive supposed-to-be-easy-to-fold-up stroller
• when the tab rips off a brand new diaper
• biting my tongue (literally)
• grocery cart wheels not turning
• grocery carts in which the baby seat belt does not work
• a wrong order at the fast food drive thru
• people who don’t DRIVE when the light turns green
• people who DO drive when the light turns red
• parents who let 11-year-olds terrorize the mall play place
• My children asking “WHY?” to something I’ve told them to do
• when I can’t get something to work and then my husband makes it work with no trouble whatsoever even though I am glad he fixed it I hate it that EVERYTHING IS SO EASY FOR HIM!

Steam is coming from my ears just after writing that list!

While I go try to avoid a fatal meltdown, tell me – what makes your blood pressure skyrocket?

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I’ve never been one to make New Year’s Resolutions. This is mostly because I have zero faith in my ability to keep them! So, I’m not making any this year either. But there are some things I want to, how shall I say, adjust for 2012.

You see, I didn’t enjoy 2011 all that much on the whole. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great, either. Just writing that makes me feel horrible ungrateful and sinful, because I have SO MUCH to be thankful for and so many blessings in my life. Seriously. My un-enjoyment of 2011 had nothing to do with what I didn’t have. It had to do with what I had on my plate, and with how I handled it.

Having a new baby (third child), and having a child who had turned up developmentally delayed was way too much for me. 2011 was pretty much all about workworkworkworkwork for me. Take care of the constant needs of an infant while working on and being hypervigilant about getting Sophie over her delays. Also I spent the first several month of Jonah’s life battling the postpartum injury to my left hand which slowed me down and left me in constant pain. Add to this financial stress that accompanied the therapies and evaluations for Sophie (co-pays are a b!tch when you have weekly appointments. Especially when you have more than one weekly appointment. And don’tgetmestarted on our insurance only covering 20 visits of therapy per year for a child who needs 50 visits per year…) and the fact that we spent our life savings on our van…by the time summer came around and I had all three kids underfoot all day, still running around to appointments all the time, I was living my life in a constant state of anxiety and panic.

And I was doing my best. I handled it. I don’t think, all that well. And yet. We made it through. Jonah is a thriving one-year-old, Sophie is about all caught up and is kicking butt in school, in therapy, and on all her testing, and Joshua is doing awesome in 2nd grade, and swimming lessons, and it seems so far has retained only *slight* emotional scarring from having an angry mommy all summer.

So 2011. You kicked my butt. I was not even close to being a worthy opponent for you. I am not sad to see you go!

2012:It’s nice to meet you. I am already looking forward to how much better I am going to handle you than I did your predecessor! Mostly because my known circumstances are just plain going to be easier this year, but hopefully because I’ve grown and learned some things in the past year as well. I am not dumb enough to assume you won’t throw me any curveballs, but I’m optimistic enough to think I can knock them out of the park this time.

Happy New Year everyone! What are your hopes for 2012?

I feel like I am at a place in my life where I’m either on or off.  When I am “on”, I can do it all – parent, keep the house clean, do the shopping, run the kids to their appointments, help out friends in need, blog, and even make dinner five out of seven nights (hey, Thursday’s Joshua has swim lessons and we always get fast food.  The other night of the week I’m just inept.)

And then, there’s my “off” times.  When I work as hard as I can during the 6- 8 hours or so a week that I have two kids at school and one kid napping so I can keep the house organized, and I can never get it all finished. ( Not that I can’t do housework when they’re all home, but…let’s just say when they are all home and awake I get adult ADD from the constant “MomMomMomMomMomMomMom” and the “waaaaaaaaaah” and my productivity plummets.)  These are the times when getting Sophie and Jonah ready and out the door for morning preK drop off either has me on the verge of tears or screaming by 8:30 a.m.  When I can’t do anything but the bare-bones, basic stuff my family needs to survive.  When I don’t even have two seconds to text, email, or call a friend in need.  Those times, I’ve got nuttin’.

There really seems to be no in-between. I can say, that always, I am doing my best. It’s just that sometimes my best is super-great and sometimes it totally sucks.  This week, and last week, too, I am totally sucking.  I kind of have a bad feeling that it is going to be this way through the fa-la-la-lidays.  As a matter of fact, I am already looking forward to the week after Christmas because Bobby has that week off  and the kids will of course be off school and Jonah’s 1st birthday and Christmas will be over and I think, oh, Bobby will be here, maybe I can breathe that week. Maybe I will get caught up on the housework.  Maybe I will even get an hour or two to myself.  Maybe I can flip the switch back to “on”.

Or maybe, the switch will be flipped before that.  I sure hope so.  At this point, I’m longing for a switch to mediocre.