WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH...

the (not so) tough, head to the liquor cabinet. that's where i ended up this evening after one of my most challenging days as a mom.

i found myself muttering, "no... not rum(this isn't spring break pina colada time!)...not vodka, do we have olives for martinis?...baileys, no...sake, no... can't a girl get a bottle of scotch? we need to make a run to the liquor store..mental note, add scotch to the shopping list along side eggs, and milk. why don't they sell booze in grocery stores??" i finally settled on a decades old bottle of couvoisier. given to us by bc3's dad, when he cleaned out his liquor collection. not bad. smooth, warm down my throat. i feel it taking the edge off a really bad day.

it started last night, with an unexpected visit to pediatric urgent care at lij. the culprit, pink eye, lily to be specific, as i had predicted in my previous post. drugstore...drops...sanitizing hand gel...home by 9:30. way past bedtimes. then this morning.. trying to figure out how we would get pearl to school...alone, without her whining about wanting to stay at home with lily and daddy. we lied. cooked up a story about a special trip to the store with daddy, alone. he bought her a book, then took her to school. it worked... no meltdowns.

i went off to work, late, due to the morning machinations. works's fine, but i found myself wondering, "what am i doing here? it's so pointless sometimes!!" after some really, really bad samples landed in my lap. that's when the desire to drink came on really strong.

i sloshed through the torrential rain to get home to my loving family, taco night, bacterial eye infections, and that stiff drink i had dreamt of all afternoon. only that's not what i got. instead what waited for me?...1 beyond recognition, tantrum filled, 4 time out maelstrom. it was epic. and in the middle of lily's nuclear meltdown, pearl says, "mommy! clean this table, this house is a mess!" i'm sorry, are you channelling my mother in your 2 1/2 year old body?? and by the way, you're the one that dropped your taco in the first place. then the talking back, "NO. YOU. DON'T. PUT. ME. IN. TIME. OUT!!" said exactly like that, petulant punctuations and all.

then, i realized that i had to look at pearl's hand. my sister had seen a splinter in her finger from saturdays trip to the beach. the kids were crawling all over the boardwalk, and my nephew had paid his own visit to urgent care to pry out his deeply embedded splinter.

i touched her finger and she cried out and ran from me as if i was trying to amputate it. bc3 had to pin her down with his full weight to get her still, while i clumsily scraped at this tiny piece of wood in her tiny little finger that had been there since saturday! when we were done, she looked at me, upset, angry and betrayed. her own mother had hurt her. she wouldn't let me hug her. it shattered my heart.

all i could think of was my drink.. i needed it. and THEY weren't going to let me have it. bc3 brought up an inadequate glass of port to appease my dark passenger.. not enough, i needed the hard stuff. it took 30 minutes of gossip girl before lily went off to bed. pearl wasn't having it.. when we finally got pearl off to bed 15 minutes later, lily woke up again! it's 10pm now, i've had my shower and am finally having my drink. i'm winding down, holding on for dear life, to my few moments, alone. we'll start again tomorrow, and tomorrow i'll remember to buy that bottle of scotch.