Spilled Milk

My number one personal rule for blogging is this:

Never post anything when you're in the midst of an emotional breakdown.

I think the reason for this is obvious. Dangerous things come out when a person is emotional. Well, today I am breaking my rule.

I just came home from McDonald's where my emotional breakdown came to fruition. I sensed it coming, which is why I went to McDonald's in the first place. It was supposed to save me! This morning was rough. All of the kids were "on one," as they say. By 9:00, Zoe and Daisy had conquered these feats:

Feat #1: Emptied the entire first aid box and used up every bandaid, every antiseptic wipe, and every tiny packet of antibiotic ointment.

Feat #2: Painted.

(I shouldn't need to elaborate). 

Feat #3: Screamed at each other and pulled out chunks of each other's hair.

(The hair pulling... seriously! Must we really be that stereotypical, girls?)

Feat #4: Got into my make-up.

Now you might be thinking something like, "Why did you leave them unsupervised long enough to do those things?" 

"Long enough" is about three minutes. It's not like my girls were unwatched for hours or even tens of minutes at a time. This is how it goes:

I make Nicky a lunch for school.

The result: Zoe and Daisy go in their closet and empty every drawer of their dressers. 

Time elapsed: six minutes.

I check Nicky's math homework for errors.

The result: Zoe and Daisy cover themselves in foot cream and roll around in my bed.

Time elapsed: two minutes.

I comb Nicky's hair.

The result: Daisy pushes Zoe down the stairs in a rocking chair.

Time elapsed: thirty seconds.

So pretty much anything I do that doesn't have me 100% focused on my two daughters results in catastrophe. Frankly, it's a dangerous way to live, and thus, I have many emotional breakdowns.

Which leads me back to today. I have a significantly larger amount of homework this week than I normally do, so this morning, I needed to get some crucial reading done so I can stay ahead. After my girls had already proven that the day was going to be rough, I decided I would take them to McDonald's where they could play and eat ice cream (at 10:00 a.m.), and I could use the free Wi-Fi to get some homework done. I assumed this would be great and everyone would be happy.

This is how it went:

Fact #1: My iPad was dead.

Fact #2: Zoe refuses to leave the ground in play areas, a fact I didn't take into consideration when I took her to a McDonald's location that has nothing on the ground.

Fact #3: Daisy hates other children.

So Daisy spent the whole time accusing another little girl of "spraying boogers" on her (while that little girl complained to her mom that Daisy had tripped her), Zoe spent the entire time either screaming at the exit of the slide or sitting on my lap, and I couldn't do anything anyway because the iPad was dead.

And those are the things that made me cry in McDonald's. And when I cry, I don't just cry about the things that are happening right then. I cry about the thousand things that I haven't cried about, even things that aren't worth crying over, like spilled milk. And that's no metaphor. I literally cry over the spilled milk... from three days ago.

I wish I could say that it's just "a pregnancy thing," but I'm so far into pregnancy that I can no longer imagine what it's like to not be this way. Is this how I am all the time? I don't know! I can't remember!

So now my girls are eating granola bars and watching Dora, and I am sipping Dr. Pepper and using my blog for self-therapy instead of doing homework. Everything is going to be okay... I think... as soon as this mess magically goes away...

...as well as whatever catastrophes have occurred as a result of me leaving my girls unsupervised so I could write this.