I’m warning you, this blog is a full on rant today. If you don’t want to listen to me rant, close out the screen now. No? You want to read about me losing my $hit? Ok but you’ve been warned.
My family is totally incompetent. For the last four, ten…seventeen years, I’ve been the “tour director” of this ship and let me tell you, this ship would sink if I wasn’t around. I’m not full of myself…I wish I were. I know this because I’m currently on strike. Sort of.
For the last week or so I’ve been letting things go. My husband is always telling me to “let it go” (sometimes singing it to me in his off key voice) so now I plan to give him a taste of what me “letting it go” is like. The only problem is, letting go is causing me even more stress because I’m discovering just how helpless they really are.
For example, it’s not my job to do the dishes. It’s hubby’s job to load the dishwasher and the oldest’s job to empty it. I can be heard wandering around the house saying things like “please load the dishwasher”, “please empty the dishwasher” and “do you really think those f’ing dishes are going to wash themselves”?
They are used to me getting so annoyed and exasperated at reminding them that I give in and do it myself. Well…not this week. I let it go. This morning I found my daughter sipping cereal out of a mug because there was no bowls or spoons. They were all piled precariously in the sink, around the sink, on the stove. We will run out of room soon and they will have to pile the dishes on the floor.
TFB. I will wash my own. I’m being selfish.
I don’t cook. I can’t cook. The children would starve to death if I cooked. So hubby cooks or we go out to eat. Or we eat frozen pizza or mac and cheese. The problem is, hubby relies on me to tell him WHAT to cook. No, really, I’m serious.
I have to make a menu and post it on the chalkboard in the kitchen. If meat is involved, I have to make sure I take it out of the freezer and defrost it at least two days beforehand which is extremely annoying because his “mother never used the microwave to defrost anything.”
He absolutely CANNOT handle cooking if I don’t do any of those things. I seriously might as well cook myself if I wasn’t so horrible at it. I am so sick of planning meals with no input from anyone else and then dealing with “I don’t like that” or “can’t we have this?”. If I hear the words “what are we having for dinner?” one more time I may stab my eardrum with a fork.
Needless to say, I did not make a menu this week. We went out to eat four times and the kids had mac and cheese twice. Yup. But we didn’t have any food in the house anyway, so there was nothing for him to cook.
Hubby, being home five days a week while I’m slaving away at work, does the grocery shopping during the school year. Actually, grocery shopping is a misnomer. He goes to the store and retrieves the groceries and brings them home.
I make the list, cut the coupons, scout the sales, organize the dinners and put everything away. You know, the crap that takes thought. Any monkey can push a cart around and follow a list. Oh, and I literally have to tell him what day to go to the store (carefully working around his oh so busy schedule of golf and stock market trading).
The fact that the kids are taking baggies of cereal and five year old fruit snacks for lunch is apparently not enough of a clue that we need to restock. So today I say, “hey, the kids have nothing to eat, here’s your list”. Because he couldn’t go yesterday, his day was jam packed with cutting the grass and…I’m not sure what else he did cuz that damn dish pile continued to grow. And the day before he was golfing.
He looks at me incredulously and says, “But I have a class today!”
What?
“It’s ON the calendar,” he continues in a matter of fact tone. I go down and look on the calendar.
“That chicken scratch?” I ask, pointing to the blurred orange writing. (Our calendar is color coded so I don’t lose my frickin’ mind trying to figure out who has to go where) “What does that even say?”
“Class,” he responds with his duh, you are so dense voice.
It looks like it says “G square triangle cat S”. Apparently I married a man fluent in hieroglyphics.
“That’s CLASS?” I ask. “Why didn’t you TELL me about it?”
“It’s on the calendar,” he reiterates like I should give him a sticker for making it that far. “And I did tell you. Three weeks ago.”
Three weeks ago??? “Do you not see the rest of the crap on the calendar?” I ask pointing at the multi-colored nightmare that I face each day. “You needed to tell me yesterday.”
So now, my whole day needs to be rearranged. I need to hurry up and get ready because I now have to take the little one to school because hubs will be gone already.
I have to bypass the shower because the older one decided to get up early to do the homework he had put off all week, so he was in the shower at the time I needed to be in the shower.
Don’t these people realize how regimented this whole routine thing is? Throw one monkey wrench in it the whole thing falls apart.
I have to grocery shop on my lunch, but not before running home to turn the crock pot on because now hubby won’t be home to turn the crock pot on and we won’t eat until 10:45 at night. I’m going to have to rush to pick the little one up after school so we can rush across town to gymnastics by 4:30…I’ve got this!
And then…”I have to be at my friend’s house at 4,” my son tells me.
WHAT????? “I can’t get you there! I have to be on the other side of town, hell, three towns over, by 4:30.”
Thirteen years old he starts to cry. “But it’s for a project for language arts!” he wails.
Great. Now I have to figure out how to split myself in two. Anyone have a cloning machine?
Everyone’s got their own agenda in this house and nobody bothers to find out if their agenda is conflicting with anyone else’s.
I’ve had it. My agenda is going to be take care of ME and let the rest of them sort it out. Eventually they’ll get the hang of it, right? Now if you’ll please excuse me I’ll be drinking a glass of wine out of the gravy boat.