So all my sappiness last night came back to bite me in the ass tonight.
Pardon my French.
Let me preface this story by saying that Kate is now on day 18 of what the doctors are telling us is a stomach virus. Day 18 of a stomach virus.
So tonight when I got home from work, Andy went to have dinner with some friends (the poor guy deserves a night out – he’s been stuck at home with both kids cleaning up body fluids for 18 days… which really, I would be institutionalized by now. I don’t do stuck-at-home very well. As evidenced by the rest of this story). So, I heated up some leftovers, but after dinner I was already slightly stir crazy.
By the time Sammy had eaten Easy Mac straight out of the container AND ingested a newspaper cut-out picture of his favorite baseball player, I decided we had to hit the road. Our usual haunts were out of the question – couldn’t go to the park because it was 1000 degrees and we were already beating dehydration off with a stick… couldn’t go to Grandma’s because the BRAT diet does not include ice cream, Oreos OR Doritos… couldn’t go to Aunt Anna’s because we didn’t want to give Baby Lily the plague.
The library was about the only option I could think of, but of course it was closed (yay for budget cuts). So we went to the grocery instead and picked up the essentials for the current state of our lives – yogurt, saltines, tissues and toilet paper. Then, there was nothing left to do but go home.
The entire night, Kate was a mess. Eighteen days of being sick was catching up with her – she was tired and sad and incredibly sensitive. Her brother couldn’t look at her sideways without her bursting into tears. Or screaming at him at the top of her lungs, one or the other.
I did not handle it well.
I was tired (Kate has been throwing up at 1:30 a.m. like freaking clockwork) and grumpy and just not feeling it.
So I spent the entire night in a pissy mood. Andy texted me at one point to find out how things were going, and I must have sounded rather despondent, because he offered to come home right away.
For whatever reason, my response (“It’s ok, I promise not to drown them in the bathtub”) wasn’t all that comforting to him. He’s kinda paranoid like that.
Anyway, here’s the thing. I spent all day at work. I rolled in the driveway at 5:15. The kids were both in bed asleep by 9:15. But for whatever reason I couldn’t manage to keep my shit together for four hours.
I only did four hours of parenting today (unless you count the five minutes I was on the phone with Kate today when she called to tell me she wanted some toast. Because that’s a request I can fill 30 miles away.).
You would think I could have patience and a smile on my face for four hours. You would think I would cherish every minute of four lousy hours.
You would think. But I couldn’t, or rather, I didn’t. I would say I was patient/smily/cherishing for a sum total of 12.45 minutes of that time.
And you know what the bitch of it is?
When I put Kate to bed, she and I laid there snuggling, and she couldn’t stop telling me that she loved me “to infinity and beyond,” that I was the best mom in the world, and that we had the best family in the world. Her words weren’t manipulative or or tinged with ohmigod-mommy-is-finally-losing-it fear (I only threatened that bathtub thing once, geesh) – she was completely sincere.
Despite all my shortcomings, all my missteps and failings, that girl loves me. I don’t deserve it, but she does.
She loves me even when I suck. I’m not sure if that’s sweet or depressing.
But I love her too. To infinity and beyond.
