I’m grumpy.
I have no good reason to be grumpy, exactly. I just spent three nights–THREE–with just Sam at a hockey tournament, where I cooked nothing, cleaned little (our room was knee hockey headquarters for a while, so some cleaning was necessary) and put up with very little in the way of whining or complaint. (They lost. Lots. But we expected to, it was in MA and while we here in Hanover take our hockey way too seriously, we look like dilettantes compared to the Mass folk, who play year-round).
I DID miss them. So I thought I’d come home all refreshed and ready to rock.
I did not. By late last night, I was cleaning with a garbage bag (never a good sign for anyone’s belongings) and cursing them all, all, all, spoiled brats who don’t care about their things or care about me enough to even put the Wii remote down and say hello when I come in. I took most of this out on my husband and not them, but they didn’t get the best of me last night, that’s for sure.
This morning the hallway, living room and kitchen counter are cleaner (and no one will miss any of what I threw away, me least of all) and I am marginally more prepared to face after-school pick-up time. One lovely side-effect of it all was that Rory was able to retain equanimity in the face of my grumpiness (usually she picks up my mood and carries it to logical, horrible extremes) and another is that lots of Happy Meal style toys are no longer cluttering my home. I’m still grumpy. If no one bothers to do much of what you spend your time doing when you’re gone, doesn’t that mean there’s no real reason to do it unless you want to? That’s semi-rhetorical question number one. Here’s number two:
If your friend checks your kid’s head for lice when he comes to your house, does that really mean your friend thinks you are a terrible, slatternly, neglectful mother?
I will answer #2: No, it does not mean your friend thinks you are neglectful. It’s just that lice is going around and no one wants to deal with that. No one is immune and any kid can pick it up from another kid at school or anywhere else.
At my dd’s (8) school the kids are putting there coats in reusable bags instead of hanging them up on hooks right now because of lice. I guess the lice are crawling from one coat/ hat to another.
I feel your pain on the other stuff. It seems like I’m the only one who cares what the house looks like. My kids always want to have people over but don’t keep it clean enough for me to feel comfortable having people over without feeling embarrassed. I tend to clean the kids room when they are at school. They seldom miss all the papers and junk that I throw away. Less is more as far as I’m concerned. Although I’m not sure if it is respectful if they are taking them up to their rooms and saving them their. Hmmm, need to think on that one. 🙂
Yes it does! I know because I already TOLD her I’d checked him. And she came over today and grilled me on it AGAIN.
I would secretly wish they would just GET lice, but she will just blame me. In her head, we will always and forever be the family that had lice. More than once.
Well, some of the best families I know have had lice. My sister had lice once. I know that the “hairy eyeball” sucks but you only can do so much. I isn’t because you don’t care for your children. No matter how much care you give them, they can still get lice from someone at school. I have other things to say but I will keep my opinion to myself this time. {{Hugs}}