Michael is playing in his play pen and watching Rolie Polie Olie. I love the whacked out parents in that show. Too funny.

The girls are supposed to be tidying up their room. I spent three hours last Wednesday cleaning it and purging their toys and clearing out pieces of paper with abstract drawings on them. It’s less than one week since that three hour venture into the Land Of Little Girls and the room is already half way to disaster again. I sent them in there to clean.

I know that they aren’t cleaning or tidying anything. They’re shouting and chasing each other and pulling clean clothes out of the drawers and playing dress up.

And I don’t have the energy to go in and raise a little Hell.

Sigh

One of the worst parts of a cancelled buses day is that the weather is usually too shitty to go outside to play and what the kids need, more than anything, is to run around outside to burn some energy. Right now, it’s half raining half just gloomy. We might get snow. We might get freezing rain. We might get some more ice pellets. We might even end up with a thunderstorm.

Not exactly playing outside weather, eh?

So, I’m hiding out in the bedroom again. Tap, tap, tapping away about nothing in particular because I’ve had my fill of today. One of those days when you wake up with a low grade headache that just won’t go away. One of those days when the house is too warm, but it’s too damp to let the fire go out completely. One of those days when the too warm house seems to contribute to the low grade headache.

I’m whiny.

I just finished folding the last HUGE load of laundry. I was away all weekend, remember? Which means that each of the laundry baskets was heaving with dirty towels and clothes from Saturday and Sunday. As I was folding the clean stuff and putting it all away, I realized something.

This “should I stay or should I go” (a little Clash pour vous aujourd hui) song that Rock has been singing lately…well part of it might have something to do with the fact that he’s got it pretty damn good around here.

Yes, he works five days a week and he supports his children and he supports me. I will never take that away from him. And yes, I’ve accepted that my job when I’m at home is to take care of the kids that he supports and to run the house that he lives in because I didn’t choose to hire and pay someone to do those things for me so that I could go out and work at another job. I get that. I accept that even on the days that I AM going out to another (paying) job. I am the Mom (TERRI!! Come on, girl!) and it’s my job.

But on the other hand….

His staying here has him in a pretty good spot. His laundry is done. He comes home to dinner every night (yes, even on the nights that I work, I make and leave dinner for everyone…it’s so that I will have something to eat when I get home. Have I ever told you the spaghetti sauce story? No? Yes? Well, here it is in case I haven’t shared…. One night I didn’t make and leave dinner for everyone. I can’t remember why, but it was definitely a fluke. Something must have come up. Regardless, I came home at around nine thirty at night, starved because I had missed dinner. I asked Rock what he had made for dinner and he said, “spaghetti”. That’s not so bad, I thought. I looked in the fridge and found a bowl of tomato sauce. “Where are the noodles?” I asked Rock. “Oh, we ate them all, but I saved you the sauce”, he replied. See why I always make something for dinner before I go?!). The house is clean and he only has to do fun stuff with the kids, with the exception, maybe of some of Em’s homework.

I work every second weekend at which time he is in charge but not expected to actually do much. He can be a “weekend Dad” during that time and do fun stuff with the little ones. On the weekends that I don’t work, I take over the parenting responsibilities and now he’s decided that he will take off during my off weekends.

He’s got it pretty good indeed.

And now I have the Clash in my head again….singing for me instead this time…

“Should I stay or should I go now?”

The baby is whining a bit. The girls are chasing each other around the hallway, shrieking in that horrible little girl shriek. It makes me shiver. Like nails on a chalk board.

Tonight…

Well, I was supposed to talk to my American Boy tonight but I gave him an out this morning (afternoon?) and I expect he’ll take it. I’m draining the poor boy, I am. I’ve started having those horrible moments again with him when I’m standing outside of myself, shouting, “SHUT THE FUCK UP, JANET!!” but I can’t make my mouth stop moving. If someone else were telling me this, I would tell them that these things need to come out in order to be released, blah, blah, blah. But for some reason, I can’t take the advice myself.

This is partly why I hate needing people.

I spent much of this weekend catching up with fellow co-workers. Nearly every conversation started with, “How’s the baby?” to which I would reply, “Oh, he’s good”. And then the inevitable question, “Is he walking, yet?” The rest of the conversation would be spent with me reducing the year down to an anecdote and trying to explain, as quickly and painlessly as possible, why the boy is not even close to crawling, let alone walking yet.

Maybe I should just have a sign made, “NO HE CAN’T WALK. I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.” Ha.

Right now, however, he’s sitting bolt upright on my bed, playing with and talking to a Tori Amos CD case. And it’s pretty darn precious, let me tell you. Every time he bangs the case against his bare foot, he mutters, “ow”.

Tonight….

Well since I think I’ll be void of the American Boy’s voice, I was thinking that I might go shopping at my store. I bought a few t-shirts without trying them on before work on Saturday and they need to be returned. Plus, as of today, our discount went up another ten percent on clothes. And we have some super duper cute stuff in, let me tell you. But now the roads are iffy and the freezing rain is starting so I’ll have to stay home.

Maybe tomorrow night, eh?

I finally got my ass into gear about dreadlocks. I was talking to my new favourite co-worker, Jill, and she was filling me in about the dreading process because she had dreads for several years. She shaved them all off after a spider fell out of them. It freaked her out.

But it excited me. Imagine spiders living in your hair!! How fucking awesome would that be?! (Don’t answer that….)

So anyway, I finally looked up what would work best for my hair type and I think I’m going to go ahead with it this weekend. Perhaps the girls can help me while their Dad’s away living it up. There’s some kit you can buy that makes it really easy and I want to find out if any of our salons carries it. If not, I’ll be taking the true D.I.Y. approach. If any of you have dreads or have had dreads, drop me a line, okay? I’d love your input.

Well, this post has taken me roughly two hours to complete. Not all at once, of course. That’s how many times I’ve been interrupted. And my parents just stopped by about forty five minutes ago. My Mom is gonna be so pissed with me when she learns about everything that’s going on. I’m not sure what her reaction to the actual news will be… she’ll just be pissed because I didn’t share it all with her in the first place. I will get a guilt trip to end all guilt trips, I’m sure. And I THINK (Judy…I’m looking at you…) that that is at least partly why I’ve avoided telling her anything.

Okay, enough rambling. Time to post this mother fucker.