MAMACADABRA

I’m in love with my little girls.  I adore them with every fiber in my being.  I want to follow them around to protect them and to just be with them almost every second of every day.  They are funny, and bright, and sweet, and kind, and eager, and I couldn’t be more proud.

Ahem.

Today it’s quite possible that these lovely, beautiful, and amazing little girls of mine were on a mission to drive me straight-up crazy.

This weekend my husband started his next trimester of school.  He attends every other weekend.  We’ve been so lucky up to this point that his school weekends have fallen on the weekends we don’t have the little girls.  This trimester, however, is split half and half due to holidays.  For the first several weekends, school and the little girls being with us, will coincide.

It is what it is.  We knew when we started going down this path that it would happen this way sometimes.

Last night the little girls and I met my mom at the mall for dinner and a shopping date for new jammies.  We arrived early, did our nightly reading in the car (knowing we wouldn’t have time later), and then met my mom and headed for the food court.  Okay, perhaps the little girls aren’t used to so many options and the ability to choose whatever they want.  And perhaps they were so hungry that the decision became harder.  But we waited…and waited…and waited…and the little girls could not make-up their minds.  Or they’d make-up their minds and then change it once we were in line.  And then finally when they decided on the restaurant they wanted they couldn’t decide what food they wanted.

I have anxiety about lines.  Not like severe anxiety that needs to be medicated but anxiety nonetheless.  Airport security lines totally freak me out.  My unease stems from not wanting to hold up the line for people behind me.  When in an airport security line I list the steps I’ll need to take once I reach the conveyor belts over and over in my head until I get there.  ‘First, I’ll take off my belt and throw it in the plastic tray, then I’ll get out my laptop, but first I have to zip-up my make-up bag so they don’t catch me for having lip gloss, although I think I in fact CAN have lip gloss, but I don’t have it in a separate bag, and will they make me take off this jacket, because it’s not really a jacket so much as a sweatshirt, and if so what am I wearing under it, and is my bra going to show through, and sh-t I’m going to need like four trays, but that’s going to hold people up, and they are going to be mad, and impatient, because I get mad and impatient when people in front of ME have a lot of stuff, but if I do it all methodically it should be okay, and it’s not like any of us get through quickly anyway, but I probably COULD get through MORE quickly if I didn’t have so much to figure out, and holy sh-t I’m like twelve people away from the conveyor belts, should I take my belt off now or should I wait until I’m closer, is it going to seem fishy if I start preparing now?!!!!’  You get the idea.  Anyway, last night when my littlest little girl chose Chinese food and we got to the part of the line at which you place your order?  And there were six or seven people behind us?  And she just looked at all the food and said “I don’t know?”  I thought I might have a heart attack.

Wait.  Have I mentioned I am on a temporary break from carbs?  That plays into this.  So…imagine you cut carbs cold turkey on Thursday morning…and now we’re at Friday night.  Also, add into the scenario that I have had far too many Diet Cokes to help get me through the loss of carbs.  I am wired out of my mind AND I’ve had lots and lots of meat and cheese.

Back to the food court.  We finally got food for all of us and sat down at two small tables that were pushed together.  The little girls were understandably excited.  I mean…new jammies were in their future after all.  They couldn’t sit still.  And when they shifted in their seats they kept pushing the tables and jostling all of the food and beverages that sat atop them.  We had a couple close calls with chocolate milks and sodas nearly toppling into our food or off of the tables.

We found perfect jammies for both little girls.  Exactly what both of them had hoped to find.  On our way home we listened to my “Little Girls” mix in the car and jammed out to Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, and Demi Lovato.  We got to one particular Demi Lovato song that the little girls love and they asked to please play it again the entire way home.  I admit…I love some of these songs…so it wasn’t bad at all…

…until…

…my husband left the house to go back to school this morning at 6:30am.  The little girls woke-up to say goodbye to him since they’d not seen him at all the night before.  I stayed in bed assuming I could sleep for a while longer.  Typically the little girls will watch a TV, or play with their dolls in the living room, but this particular morning they decided instead to singe Demi Lovato.  At the top of their lungs.  Oh, and by the way, they only actually know TWO LINES from this song.  Oh.  My.  God.

I got up and made breakfast.  We stuck close to the house and I begged them to play outside.  It was warm today and the forecast predicts cold weather for the next week.  I wanted them to take advantage of it.  They rode their bikes to the neighbor kids house and one of my little girls stayed there with one of them and one of my little girls returned to our house with the other.

So.  Picture me with NO carbs now for two full days, going on a third, cleaning my house, exhausted, when I overhear the neighbor girl talking about wanting to play naked Barbies.  Son of a b-tch.  I went down to suggest that they please PLEASE go play outside.  We have a tire swing, they have bikes, they like to dance to their radios in the driveway, ANYTHING.  They opted for dancing in my old heels in the driveway.  I was inside working on the house again when DEMI EFFING LOVATO came blaring through the open windows.

Then, as if taking my mental cue, the dog threw up.

My husband came home, and God bless him he brought me lunch and Diet Coke, but then he “really really” wanted to go to the gym.  So he left again while I finished the house knowing that I could run when he got home.  The little girls found their way back inside and I said “why aren’t you playing outside anymore” and the neighbor girl said “I don’t have any energy.  I’m useless.”  It was at this point that I started thinking ‘I don’t like other people’s children one bit.’  And then my little girl and the neighbor girl started singing.  Demi Lovato.  But only two lines of the song.

I was finally able to run with the dog and have some Demi Lovato free time.  When I returned home I made the little girls a picnic that they took to the front yard.  After we all had dinner we ran out for ice cream and I read to them in the car.  It was a lovely way for us to end the day together as a family.

Now that the day is through, and the little girls are in bed, I feel like an a-shole for having so little patience for them and the neighbor kids today.  But sweet Jesus the combination of my husband being gone, that damn song that they kept singing, the lack of any carbs, the ODing on Diet Coke, the dog throwing up, and the need to get this house in order was a teensy bit too much.

TODAY:  What if giving up carbs is bullsh-t?  And what if the song “Skyscraper” by Demi Lovato mysteriously vanishes off of my iPod.

PS – Oh…and to be clear…I’m well aware that I did all of this and more to my mom when I was little.  But it was “Let’s Hear it For The Boy” and “Live to Tell” instead of Demi Lovato.  Which, I swear, makes it better.  Right?