The post that started with no point but ended up being a whine

Well, it's been a week.  And it's not over yet.  So please excuse me if this post sucks because I'm sitting here writing it with literally no clue where this will go.  I almost didn't even write a post for today, but then I decided that I can and should do this.  I'll just have to dig deep for the funny.  And the point. 

I'm sure you can all relate to the kind of week this has been  The kind that won't end.  The kind where you are going from the second you get out of bed in the morning until the second you can fall back into bed at night without feeling guilty that you didn't finish this or forgot to do that.  I have tried to get to bed by 10:30 every night this week and failed miserably.  I told myself on Sunday night that I would go to bed at 10 every night and then I laughed because myself can be so funny sometimes.  

So now that you're here reading this and you can't stop because you want to know where I'm going with this (hey, me too!  Mind sharing?), I'm going to whine about my week.  First of all, D was on his switch week.  Not the good switch where he gets 7 days off.  The bad switch, where he works from 8 p.m. till 8 a.m. Thursday night through Wednesday night.  Strike 1 against the chance of having a good week this week.  Not only is it hard for me to not have him home that many nights in a row, it's hard for me to watch him  get more and more exhausted as the days pass. 

And you can always tell when it's his switch week because we get into way more fights.  Like one evening while L is catnapping he'll try something and I'll look at him with these crazy, exhausted, googly eyes and I'll be like "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR EVERLOVING MIND????"  And then we'll fight because he likes to smack my butt when I walk by.  (Which, wives, I think we can all relate to this because I'm pretty sure they teach this to our husbands in college.  The class is entitled "How to drive your wife totally mental but fool yourself into thinking that you're being affectionate.")  That's just an example that I pulled out of thin air.  Not like this fight just happened in my house or anything.

Add to the fact that not only is it switch, but lawn season has started as well.  Now this is something I hate for purely selfless reasons, no sarcasm whatsoever.  It is SO hard for me to see my poor husband finally finish his switch week, only to come home and beg me to call him at 10 a.m. to wake him up so he can get out to do lawns until 7 at night.  And I hate myself sometimes because in my heart I just want to give him a break but the list of things I've been needing/wanting him to do and the things we need to get done together has been ballooning out of control during those 7 days while he's been working his butt off to provide for our family.  But my heart doesn't always win out, and I'm probably going to explode my to-do list all over him tonight when he gets home.  (Please God help me to wait until tomorrow!)

So there's strike 2.  Strikes 3-29 are the fact that this week has been non-stop for me as well.  I thought things would settle a bit after the event was over last week.  But my dad once said something to me about how space always loves to be filled.  (Like in a house, you can never have empty space because there's always something to put there.  In my house, it's piles of clutter, mail and clothes.)  My schedule is no exception.  Work is crazy and that's all I'm going to say.  CRAZY. 

I have so many errands to do that I squeeze them in on my lunch.  And this weekend, we're throwing my dad a retirement party.  Yeah, my dad is retiring.  And he's young.  Like younger than 52, but older than 50.  So we're going to celebrate his young retirement by giving him a cocktail party.  My mom and I have been working on this together, and it's unfolding in classic fashion.  My mom freaks out and gets stressed about the details during the planning stages, and I play my part by calming her down and trying to keep things in perspective.  Now that we're painfully close to the party, my mom is cool as a cucumber and I'm in full-on panic mode. 

Last night my mom called me and I was like the walking dead.  She asked what's wrong, so I read her a chapter from the book of "My life sucks and no one else's life could possibly suck more than mine because mine sucks so bad and my life sucking automatically takes away the suck from your life so suck it."  And my mom, who is going to be hosting 75+ people IN HER HOME on Saturday genuinely asks me what she can do to make my life easier.  My mom, who works 50+ hours a week and still manages to coordinate the contemporary choir in church, go to her prayer group every Wednesday and mentally support her emotionally unstable daughter, asks what she can do for me.  And then I felt guilty and tried to put my life in perspective.    

Which worked until I went upstairs to get ready for bed.  Connie raced ahead of me up the stairs and stopped midway to make sure I was following him.  Which is sweet, but when you're in a mood like I was, I was so annoyed.  Like "Get up the stairs already!!"  So I went to check on the baby and he was still cute, so all was well in that world.  I went to the bathroom to get ready for bed, and that's when it usually all comes to a head for me.  

At that point, I'm so close to being in bed that I can taste it.  I literally cannot go into my bedroom before I brush my teeth and wash my face because if I do, I will not be able to control the urge to snuggle under the covers and then I'll regret it even more because then I'll have to talk myself into getting ready for bed twice as hard.  So I looked longingly at my wonderful bed (I finally bought new sheets, by the way) but pasted my toothbrush and started brushing.  Then I washed my face and when I looked into the bathroom mirror (who I'd say bordered on being more of a JM than an MM), I noticed that, in honor of the Icelandic volcanoes who are wreaking havoc on Europe, a little mini volcano had sprung up on my chin.  Sweet!  Welcome to my face, volcano.  I'm glad to have you for what I'm sure will be a very long stay.  Perfect timing, as always.

Then I took my wedding rings off for the night because a minor disease has appeared in the place where the rings sit and I don't know what it is but I don't have time to go to the doctor.  So I just take my rings off at night and put cortisone on my finger and that seems to help.  And then when I went to put the lid back on the cortisone, the lid slipped through my fingers, bounced off my foot and down the stairs.  And that sent me over the edge.  I kicked the door frame out of frustration with my bare foot (idiot) and turned the involuntary pain tears into angry tears of sweet emotional relief.  And then I told the lid "Screw you, I'll find you tomorrow."  (Which the lid and I both know I don't mean.  What I really was saying was, "Screw you lid, you're staying wherever you are unless I happen upon you at some other time in my life."  Which, now that I think of it, is maybe one of the reasons my house is messy.) 

And then I went to bed.  And woke up this morning thinking it was Friday.  (Idiot.)