I Can't Afford One of Those Fancy Celebrity Mental Break Resort Spas in, Like, Ojai, California, So I'm Afraid When I Get Taken Away It's Going to Be to Somewhere Like Toledo, OH.

this is probably another one of those things i should share only with my girlfriends while hiding under a pile of wine, but am instead putting out there on the internet in case anyone can relate or needs a "me, too" today.: 

i'm not always sure i was built to be a mom. i actually think i'm kind of bad at it. not because my kids aren't well provided for- they are. but just because i don't enjoy it as much as i think i should. 

and i definitely cannot do it alone- or can only handle a few hours alone at a time. if robb wasn't as involved as he is, taking equal parts responsibility for all parts of providing care, i for sure would have jumped a train long ago or would be (permanently, not just occasionally/daily) sucking my thumb and rocking under a chair. 

i need a staff just to keep things reasonably together. 

i'm the kind of mom who would have excelled in a different time period, in a different social class. i could have used nannies and nursemaids and hand maidens and riding instructors and pillow fluffers to help me with the task of raising my children and not losing my damned mind. i don't think of myself as a delicate flower, but i could totally launch into antebellum rich southern lady most of the time. "i'm feeling rather faint, darling. please take these youngins outside, i simply cannot handle their cacophonous noise today."...."miss mary, my stars! look at this mess these children have made! are those alphabet pretzel pieces ground into the carpet?!?! someone bring me my nerve pills, i'm having another spell. i need to lie down."

i feel like i'm stressed out a lot of the time, anxious, angry. jumpy. really jumpy. i scream and swear. and then i apologize. i make henry cry sometimes when i surprise him with yelling the 10th time he asked the same question and got the same (previously polite) answer.  i don't deal well with intermittent, unpredictable loud noises or having to stop people from killing themselves all the time.

someone is always almost bleeding. me or them, sometimes both. 

and i don't love that. this is why i didn't go into ER or trauma surgery. 

my nerves stay raw, so when then something small in life goes awry, like a battery is missing in a remote control or my blerging pedometer not working AGAIN and i'm due to submit by steps for a cutthroat work competition- i just lose my shit all over the place. 

seriously, though. i feel like the world's biggest wuss. traveling with the kids the last 3 weekends has just put me over the edge. this four day holiday weekend, my parents had the kids for 2 of the days. i only had them for 1 day alone while robb did a bunch of yard work. in that limited time, i cried once. i yelled thrice. and since they went to bed, i'm on my second hard mommy drink. 

i just find dealing with this (ADORABLE, WONDERFUL, SWEET, AMAZING)....chaos....really hard. and i super duper like mine and have all the support in the world. but it's hard. i always think about single parents or people with more than two (what?! why???????)  or with money troubles or a million other ways this could be harder and more stressful and wonder how they do it. 

mad love and respect all around. this shit is not easy. i lift my glass to all of you and say, what? "another day completed and everyone survived?" 

maybe that's good enough for now. i should make bumper stickers. but i'm too tired and i'd probably spell them wrong. 

Lobster Killer

there's a lot to catch up on, but i'm bone-tired and brain-weary, so i'll keep it brief. my wonderful grandfather died this week and we're all just trying to find our way back from that. i don't want to talk about it anymore. i feel like i've said all the words. now i just want to be quiet and sad for a while. 

so, but anyway....we took the tiny menaces with us to celebrate 'big hank's' life at the memorial and family gatherings. they're loud and inappopriate and often naked and have no respect for the solemnity of the event....so it was probably very useful to have them around. 

during the gatherings, of coure we ate funeral food, which just means comfort food, which just means fatty salty sweet things with a side of ranch dressing. 

before that, i've been changing my diet to try to get back to some health and i've been making more of an effort to demonstrate my own healthy eating habits to henry, who prefers candy to breathing, and anna, who chews on people for fun. 

for the longest time, henry's been fascinated by the fact that i eat fish. i *rarely* eat fish, but i'm the only one in the family who does, so he just wouldn't stop talking about it. so after his 1 millionth viewing of the anti fish industry propoganda film called 'finding nemo,' he told me that FISH ARE FRIENDS. NOT FOOD and that i mustn't eat fish anymore. 

well, you know, i'm super soft when it comes to him and i'm a mostly vegetarian anyway, so i didn't think it would be a big deal. and so i promised. 

not 2 days later, i could not stop my evil predator instincts from ordering and enjoying lobster tacos at this cool new local pub. i savored every bite, but then felt guilty like i had cheated on henry. 

so i vowed to never tell him. 

not 2 minutes after arriving home, i was telling robb all about how great my meal was and i heard, WHAT IS LOBSTER TACOS?

i am the worst kind of villain. i apologized to him like i'd killed his (sea) puppy and just let him have more candy. 

but now i swear. i'll be good. 

fish are friends, not food, right?

(but technically, isn't a lobster a bug? or a dinosaur or something? that tastes like a loophole)

Disney World and Universal Studies, 2015 (The Time We Almost Broke the Children with Magic)

have you ever accidentally watched one of those japanese game shows where everyone is talking loud and high and fast at once and there's, like, stuff spinning, and feathers for some reason, and currency falling from the sky and a robotic animal is marching across the front making you uncomfortable with its direct eye contact into your soul?

that's what disney is like to a 3 year old. 

but we had an AMAZING time. it was the best time spent with my phenomenal parents and sister and almost new brother-in-law (who is GREAT, btw. we're very lucky. <-- that's a small sample of my maid of honor speech. spoiler alert: the rest is a moving rendition of 'the wind beneath my wings' with interpretive dance and streamers). 

the weather was hot and sunny most of the time, the crowds weren't bad at all relative to how they are much of the year (we never waited more than an hour for a ride, i think), and the accomodations at the beautiful condo my parents so generously rented for us all are incredible. we really had so much fun and as soon as we left we all wanted to go right back. 

but, poor henry. disney is a lot to ask. this phase of toddlerhood is a lot like i remember early high school feeling. you have all these huge feels and you don't know what to do with them, so you get obstinate and try to control anything you can. we heard a lot of "i don't like-" and "i don't want to-" from him, which is hard to hear when you're at the most bestest place on the planet, that is, allegedly, custom built for short people like him. 

but now i realize, i'm not positive he even really knew what disney was before he went. "that's where mickey and cinderella lives" is sort of vague and confusing, right? so pretty much i think he would have been happy if "going to disney" was playing at the hotel pool all day every day and eating more candy than he usually gets. 

and once we got the hang of how to make naps and meals work near-ish their normal schedules, and how to accomodate his actual desires instead of our assumumptions of what his desires should be, it went pretty smoothly. he LOVED LOVED LOVED the teacups and It's a Small World, and that's what it's all about, right? he could give two hoots about most of the characters (from movies he watches constantly) but was all about woody woodpecker, who i sincerely doubt he's ever heard of. weird. 

i think in a few years, he'll be all about everything there. but it is a difficult place- it is a busy, hot and loud and every single ride, show, passage, and bathroom empties into a gift shop. so kids hear "no" all the time when constantly asking for merch. and there is a lot of sugar available. 

the kids got along great and are closer after the trip. 

anna was a trouper. she just road along on my front pack most of the time, kind of sleeping here and there and checking it all out. of the 40,000 people who come to the parks daily, she waved until she received the attention she wanted to about 39,500. we heard a few times things like "she's going to be a diplomat someday" because she was so precocious and friendly.  i feel a new level of attachment to her after all that concentrated time. it was wonderful. her favorite thing was playing in a very public splashpad along the main walk at EPCOT. she was soaked head to toe before i thought to remove any articles of clothes/shoes, so now we have disney towels. :) henry enjoyed it, too, but we had learned, so he just went in his skivvies. you're welcome, other tourists!! 

i could go on and on. i haven't even mentioned how the harry potter parks at universal which were EPIC. 

i feel badly that there was any stress and that i wasn't always as cool and happy as i wish i could be on the trip. being totally honest, and this might not surprise anyone....disney is my favorite thing ever and so anything that interferes with my enjoying of disney is annoying to me. crabby toddlers and hungry, tired babies are some of those things. so once again my sarah self and my mom self were in disputes. but they eventually worked it out. and to expect nothing but smooth sailing on a trip like this is unrealistic, since taking these people to the mall or grocery store right now is a crazy challenge. this is waaaay more to ask than any of that. so i'll let myself off the hook and just start a new countdown calendar for next trip. 

cannot say enough THANK YOU ONE BAZILLION TIMES OVER to my incredibly wonderful family and amazingly generous parents. henry and anna have the best grandparents ever. (i mean, besides my own personal grandparents. they set the bar extremely high).