warning: rant in progress

I've had a day.


Work called this morning as soon as the kids were at school, wondering if I could come in and pick up some hours. My immediate thought was hell, no, but it didn't take me long to change my mind. The pressure on me right now to produce cold hard cash is huge, so I went in while the kids were in school. I got up off of the comfortable sofa, put down my laptop and sucked it up. I picked up shifts Wednesday and Thursday. I also picked up shifts Saturday and Monday. Add in my scheduled Sunday and I just bought myself six days in a row. I get a little drippy around the eyes every time I think of it.


I got the kids home from school and headed out to the grocery store, since one of the things on my To Do List today had been to get some food in the house. Surfer Dude went with me, and I was no sooner out of my car than I saw my patient with the relative from hell from yesterday's post. She was moving pretty well for a woman in the excruciating pain that prompted the narcotics run earlier. As I watched her in horror, she leaned into the car and I realized that The Man in question was right there. My trip took longer than necessary since I did all of my shopping looking over my shoulder for Dumb and Dumber.



Then my cell phone started ringing. It was Sasquatch with earthshattering questions about gaming systems and birthday cash he needed me to pull and three phone calls in five minutes later I told him I was no longer answering my phone and would talk to him when I got home. Then I tried to pull the birthday money he asked for, only to find out that it exceeded the cash back limit by ten dollars and I had to stand in that godforsaken end of the workday line twice.


We walked in the door to this scenario - Gumby in the bathroom calling me frantically on my cell, the floor littered with juice bottles, empty cups and the broken piece of a chair arm and the kitchen wall dripping with some unnamed fluid that no one was willing to take responsibility for. One of Sasquatch's oldest friends was over, just to spice up the mix a little and confuse the story still more. I've known this kid since he was seven, and he may stand seven inches taller than me but I can still take him out. And he knows it. At one point Gumby looked me in the eye and lied straight out. When called on it he said "I just said it because I thought that's what you wanted to hear."


And I went off. In a ballistic kind of way. Nuclear, even. Of all the phrases on my shit list right now, this one is pretty near the top. And to have those foul words come out of my sweet little baby's mouth left a really sick taste in my own mouth. I would far rather be verbally attacked by an asshole with a Vicodin agenda.


There are times when the anger I have about the way my life is changing almost overwhelms me. And it surprises me, too. The things I'm angry and upset and sometimes sad about aren't the things I thought I would be angry and upset and sometimes sad about. I'm learning so much about myself, and a lot of it is, for a lack of a better word, fascinating. Is this really the person I am? How long has this been going on? And why am I just now figuring it out?


But as I looked around my destroyed kitchen and checked out all the crappy food that I was going to be feeding my children because I don't have time to make them anything decent, as I thought about how I was going to have to depend on them to keep themselves safe when they are left to their own devices, as I thought of days and days of work ahead of me, I just felt defeated.


And that's so not a nice feeling.