Monday, Monday

Do you ever have days where you feel like a complete and utter failure? Because I'm having one of those days today.


The kids have been sick and I didn't feel so great myself this weekend. We all laid around and slept a lot and the kids took cold medicine and blew their noses and whined about how awful they felt.


Mr. Wonderful and I made the decision to not let The Princess dance in Nutcracker this year. Her ballet schedule, combined with school is grueling and we just felt that adding Nutcracker rehearsals into the mix was just too much. The Princess seems both disappointed and relieved at the same time. I don't know if she (or me!) will be able to keep up with this ballet schedule either. Her ballet school has her scheduled for every single day, for 2-3 hours, except for Wednesday and Sunday. There may have to be some changes made there, too.


But I digress. I was trying to explain what's been going on here so that I can then attempt to explain why I am feeling like the worst mother in the universe...


This morning The Princess was dawdling and whining about her sore throat. The Boy was his usual so-laid-back-he's-practically-dead-teenaged-self. I was busily ingesting copious amounts of caffeine in an attempt to jump start my brain so that I could try to figure out the logistics of this crazy day. I was mentally running through my schedule of dropping one child at school and then dropping the other child miles away at carpool pickup, then later today picking up one child and then picking up the other child and also attending an Open House at a school and buying groceries and cleaning the house and making dinner. In other words,  what I'm trying to say is that with all this dawdling and whining, teenage coolness and middle aged stressing we were running late this morning. The Boy wanted to drive, which is fine because he needs the practice, but this was probably not the best day for The Boy to drive.


He is a very careful driver. And I was getting twitchy and impatient because we were running so late. And so naturally I snapped at The Boy (because the speed limit was 45 and he was only going 41). Which was a really smart thing to do with a novice driver, huh? And then, because I'm really mature like that, I snapped at The Princess and told her that it was all her fault that we were running late because she kept dawdling this morning. And then, because I knew that I was in the wrong and I am such a wonderful mother, I got even snippier and started lecturing them about moving faster in the morning and how this just wasn't acceptable. I guess I was on a roll because then I started haranguing them about their rooms and keeping up with homework and getting more organized. However, I'm pretty sure I managed to refrain from mentioning the wire hangers.


My poor kids were probably so relieved to get out of the car and be done with their insane mother. When I got home I snapped at the dog because she wouldn't stop that horrible licking sound - SLURP SLURP SLURP. It was making me crazy. When the cat started whining to be fed - again - I lost it and shouted at him to SHUT UP YOU STUPID CAT and then I burst into tears because I am a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad person.


I think maybe I had a bit too much coffee this morning.


*sigh*