Scream

There's a fish in this bucket!

Chris left town for another week. Things have the potential to get pretty grim around here soon.

My sweet, laid back baby girl has been replaced with a raging monster, and this makes single parenting a difficult endeavor.

It's not just whining. And it's not just a little loud. It is ear piercing. It is clenched fists and red face. It's shut the windows so the neighbors won't hear. It's cry in the middle of the night and wonder if maybe, just maybe, you drank too many glasses of wine while pregnant and this is what happens to bad parents like you.

On Sunday I tried to walk with the three of them to the grocery store to get food for lunches for the week. She wanted to "walkie" and push her own stroller. I wanted to pull my finger nails out. But instead we walkied, slowly, towards the closest store. But she had no shoes on, nor any intention of putting them on. So I said, Hey Gill, wanna walkie? You need shoes. This is the big city!

She screamed and threw her apple at me.

Aware that the only person who would be judged in this public performance would be yours truly, I took a deep breath. Pretended to be zen and calm; pretended nothing could push me off my high momma horse.

I said, Walkie? Shoes. No shoes? Stroller.

She screamed and threw her shoes in my face.

I put her in the stroller. And things just deteriorated.

This was the point where Mae and Bela chose to have a street-side squabble of their own. I was looking pretty bad. I started to sweat a little. I felt a little nauseous. I felt embarrassed. But mostly, I just felt so, so tired.

I buckled her screaming and writhing body into the stroller with brute force. I scraped her shoes off the sidewalk, fisted the apple, stifled a desperate and psychotic scream of my own, swung the stroller around and marched back home.

When we entered our alley I took her half-eaten apple and threw it with all my strength into the side of a brick garage, to watch with indulgent satisfaction as it exploded into hundreds of mealy apple bits.

The girls looked worried, and I only felt a little better. 

Once inside I needed a minute to collect myself, and then I gathered her up and hugged her and started doing weird yoga breathing, inhale for 10 exhale for 10, in the hopes that she would either A)begin breathing deeply, become fully relaxed, and chill the f*** out, or B) just stop crying because she was wondering what on earth had happened to her mother.

She stopped. And we're all fine now.

But we are only on day 2 of the 1 against 3 challenge. If you need to find me tomorrow I'll be in my office late, catching up on work (hiding from Gillian) until my yoga class (further escape) starts.

Don't stay away too long, dear.