99 Whiny, Self-Indulgent Problems

 I highly recommend this ‘eating your feelings’ business. Unless you want to be at all productive. The sugar crash is spectacular.

I had a bit of a… moment during the kids bath and bedtime routine last night. You might say it’s irrational to cry when your kid just won’t get out of the shower already, but I would tell you to rewind the day and count up exactly how many times you asked said child to do something, and he just flat out ignored you. Irrational? I think not.

Certainly it wasn’t just the shower that was getting me. In a competition of whose life is hardest, I would lose quickly. Still, I’m operating at a level of highly frustrated these days, compounded by the fact that both kids were up last night. It is SO MUCH HARDER to wake up in the middle of the night when you’re used to getting consecutive hours of sleep. My  mind immediately starts racing because this is such an unusual occurrence I don’t really know what to do with myself. What if Bub needs more than just tucking in? What if Bubette doesn’t just want a pacifier that’s been thrown overboard? What if I never sleep through the night AGAIN?

One thing that’s giving me no small amount of grief is my inability to schedule a freaking haircut. Both my preferred person and my backup are booked for weeks, and there’s the little issue of child care to contend with. I haven’t had my hair cut since last AUGUST and circumstances are getting dire.  On a scale of one to ten, how awful is my current plan to bring Bubette with me to my hair appointment  on Friday? I think I could keep her  busy with my phone and snacks and other distractions employed by great parents across the land, but how annoyed would the stylist be? I’m going to someone new because of the aforementioned scheduling issues. Weigh in.

We’re also trying to plan a vacation with very little luck. I know only crazy people whine about how hard it is to plan a vacation, one that they plan to take without their children no less, but it is hard. It’s no small amount of money we’ll be sinking into the trip and we want it to be worth it. Add to the equation that my husband and I seem to be on completely separate vacation wavelengths, and you’ve got our current stalemate.

His number one vacation of choice is a baseball road trip, where we see five games in a six day period and drive something like 2000 miles, sleeping in a new hotel every night.

Me: Do you have any other ideas?

Him: Well, we could drive up the California coast, into Oregon. Or we could take a New England road trip.

Me: I’m sensing a theme here.

The problem is that he is easily bored, and I am not. I look forward to making tough decisions like whether I should nap, or eat something, or maybe just sit here in this comfortable chair with a drink in  my hand and think about that for a little while. He’s afraid that one week in the same place will make him antsy, and having traveled with this man before, I know that this is true.

I finally suggested that we send the kids to their grandparents for a week, and just stay home. We can sleep in, go out to eat, go shopping and rent every movie we’ve missed over the past year. We can go to the beach, or to Disneyland, and pretend that we’re on a real vacation without ever having to pack, or unpack, or even send the dog to be boarded.

Sounds kind of wonderful, doesn’t it?

(It’s not going to happen.)