Sometimes I just can't do it all. Those people who tell you that when you grow up, you can be whatever you want to be? They lie. Because I'm grown up, I want to be a competant mother, and tonight, I'm failing miserably.
To give myself a little credit, the stars have aligned this evening to work against me and rip a hole in my sanity. It seemed like our day was going okay, we had finished dinner and were playing in the backyard to burn off some steam before bed. Payton's learned how to blow her own bubbles, and Ryker was running through the stream of water from the hose as I watered the garden. The kids were happy. Life was good.
Within seconds, the sun that we had been enjoying vanishes and the sky becomes dark and filled with ominous looking storm clouds. This isn't a strange metaphor to describe a change for the worse as far as our evening goes, but it might as well have been. Seriously, I felt like Dorothy and was waiting for the wicked witch to ride by on her bike through the darkness, cackling in amusement at my life.
Payton thinks that the sudden darkness and intense wind is amazing, and she excitedly helps me put away our outside toys, ordering Ryker around, "Hurry Ry, clean, clean, storm Ry. Hurry!"
Ryker's not listening though, he's doing his own thing over where I was planting shrubs against our fence yesterday. I'm thinking he's playing with the soil I had filled the edges with, which is fine, because we're on our way inside for baths. I go to scoop him up, and it's not soil. Oh no. It's poop. Dog shit.
We race inside, with him protesting and Payton trying to SAVE everything she can carry. I'm trying to steer her in the direction of the door while pinning Ryker's hands down away from his face, that's already covered in shit. It's just beginning to pour as we make it inside. I would never believe, until I had children, that a 25 foot walk could take 10 minutes.
The sky is seriously dark, and our house? Pitch black.
Payton goes to turn on the lights, and the power's out. "Lights broke Momma, Daddy fix. They broke Momma. No light, dark Momma. Where Daddy go? Daddy fix?"
My poor, sweet little girl is wanting an explanation, but Ryker is THRASHING to get out of my arms, and SCREAMING hysterically. I just want to wash his hands and face with soap. And bleach. And then some hand sanitizer. But, I leave it at the soap in an attempt to avoid giving my son serious chemical burns.
Tonight of all nights, I really, really wanted to bath him. And scrub him raw with his Buzz Lightyear loofah, that apparently is now Payton's since we just saw Toy Story 3. She's generously donated her Ariel puff to him instead. But instead of filling the bath, I'm racing around looking for flashlights with Ryker, who's terrified of thunder, on my hip. I'm lighting candles, but as fast as they are lit, Payton is promptly grabbing a chair from somewhere to blow them out. Serious child endangerment and fire hazard. And if a fire is started? My cordless phone won't work because of the power shortage, so there will be no 911 rescue for us. We're on our own. In a dark, bathless island covered in shit, with one overly excited toddler and one that's scared stiff.
Speaking of shit, someone pooped. It's Ryker. I carefully take the kids upstairs into the blackness, and continue lighting candles as Ryker sits on the floor screaming up at me in desperation to be held. It's times like these where I wish I was an octopus, because I need at least eight arms just to manage. Diaper changes by candlelight- this is what romance novels are made of.
Getting the kids calmed down and into bed takes over two hours, and this is with no bath, no chores completed, and no end to the nightmare in sight.
And here I am now. Sitting in my living room, writing my heart out and reliving the pain of this evening, because I'm into sadistic torture like that. I'm ignoring all of the tasks that I have to have done for tomorrow, because as fate would have it, the power just went back on. Just in time for me to feel compelled to finish everything instead of sneaking off to sleep early. As I said, the stars have aligned against me.
I might need glasses, but I could have sworn that the woman who just rode her bike past our house had a green face and Toto peaking out from under a blanket in her basket.
