Irked

I am so irritated with everyone, especially myself.

All day long, all I hear in my head are ridiculous cliches. If you want something done, you better do it yourself. Why aren’t the whites whiter? A mother’s work is never done. You’re doing the most important job there is. Really? The early bird gets the worm. Cleanliness begets cleanliness. (Thanks, Martha Stewart, not at our house!) Fail. Fail again. Fail better. There will be time, there will be time. ( No there won’t, I scream after I hear that one. There won’t be time! This is the time!)  One must know how to work and how to love. But how, I wonder, can one get everyone else to just shut the fuck up?

I am tired of the children. I am tired of the house. I am tired of the tight budget borne of a single income. I am tired of the worn out clothes that don’t fit, and the laundry that smells even when it comes out of the washer. I am tired of the small counters and the endless pile of dishes. I am tired of feeling ugly and old and used up. I am tired of my mind feeling broken and interrupted and put upon.

Even the dog. The compulsive eater of a dog. Lurking, furtive, trying to look inconspicuous under the table, his eyes black and shining. He cannot help help himself. Some ancient message in his scandinavian DNA that whispers to him, Eat, eat the oatmeal. Lick the plates of the scrambled eggs. Eat. I hate him, too. As soon as I leave the room, I hear the clinking, the sound of his toenails, lifting his giant silver back, up, up, onto the table.

There is a jolly rancher stuck to the baby car seat. Right in the seat. I ignored it at Easter, when it made its debut, when it was still green. Now it is black, and covered with dog hair. It has fused with the fabric and I can’t pull it off now, even though I tried. When Mr. Mac is put into the seat, his body heat starts to soften the black lozenge, and it leaves sticky black smear on all his pants.

The dishes, again. Our counters are too small. Our sink is too small. We aspire to be a family who cooks, but our kitchen is a small horseshoe of stingy workspace. The sink I want costs $500 and will require cutting a larger hole in the counter, which still would be, too small.  The only answer is a new house, which is yet again, too expensive. And I so do dishes that are too big for our small sink, and I load and reload the dishwasher, all the time stewing about the poor fit of everything.

I am a poor fit for a housewife. I am Lisa Simpson. I need to be graded. ( Remember that Simpsons episode, when Bart repaints the school parking spaces too small and the school has to be shut down. Lisa can’t handle it and has a fit in front of her mother. Grade me! She screams. Grade me! Marge, not sure what to do, hurriedly scribbles an A+ on a piece of paper. Lisa sighs in relief and walks away. Marge is freaked out.

That’s me. I need grades. Compliments. Feedback. Honorable mention. There isn’t much of that in my current line of work.

No one ever says to me:

A+ for going to the grocery store, nice way to handle that tantrum. Good save the way you used the inside of your skirt to wipe up the puke. Nice ball handling with that crap filled diaper you changed, again, in the pouring rain, I think maybe someone even checked you out a little, when you were all bent over like that, ‘cause on top of being a mama,  you’re a cutie!

And there is no one to do it. No honor roll for being a stay at home mother. No bonuses, no raises, no promotions for on the job know-how. Those three phone calls I made to the pediatrician yesterday, politely but firmly requesting that someone call me the fuck back about the open sores on my son’s mouth? No honorable mention for those soft skills, all while piloting one of those goddamn car carts around Wegman’s. Silence.

The only thing that I get in the way of feedback is just another knocked over glass of juice, another fight at the table. I know I sound melodramatic. I know I am melodramatic. And I hate myself for it. A crappy housewife and a drama queen. I get an F.

And here’s the worst part, I have nothing to fall back on. I’ve been at this game since I was 25, and I didn’t manage to get a master’s degree at night. I don’t happen to be a registered nurse, or know how to wait tables. I am dependent on my husband for income, the least feminist thing of all. Not earning a salary so I could stay home with my kids was much cuter when I was in my twenties.

Having kids in your twenties is such a fun ride. You’re young, they’re young. You probably only have two. It blows your mind. You start a garden. Do DIY projects on the house. Life is adorable, and you take lots of pictures. Then you have three kids and you are in your thirties. You can’t find the camera anymore, and if you do, it is never charged. You stop getting invited places, and people stop coming to see you. The upstairs shower never gets tiled. The backer board  just sits there, disapproving, while you cuss and plunge the toilet. Again. What do they do to this toilet? You ask yourself, ignoring the boxes of tiles and the tile cutter ( cortadora baldosa, in Spanish,  cause of course, I can’t ignore them). I am thirty-two, and I am bad at my job.

So when I cry at Wegman’s because I hate everyone SO MUCH, I feel terrible. We are so lucky. Three healthy children. An employed husband. Safe in our home, food purchased for the children to eat.  No war nearby. Why can’t I be satisfied with that?

Why should it bother me so much that the chicken house needs to be shoveled out, that there ants all over the kitchen and bathroom counters?

I need to wash my face. I need to believe that I haven’t lost my looks, my brains, that the adult that I never quite got to know in my twenties will still be there, waiting for me here in my thirties, while I finish the dishes and call the mechanic to apologize for forgetting our appointment, again. Here’s hoping.