To be completely honest, I'm wallowing. And no, it's not a good look, but I'm in a phase where I just can't quite locate my 'happy place'. I am living one of those frustrating dreams where you can't quite make things happen the way you want them to. Just 'frustrating dream' status, rather than 'nightmare', so I should be quite thankful really. But I'm not in a happy place.

I'm mostly unhappy because Marc is away for work all this week. He left early this morning for Perth. Across the other side of the country - so it may as well be the other side of the world. Back Sunday - so that messes with the weekend, and it's the weekend toll that has taken its... toll... over the years. Over the 10 bloody years he's been working in this damn job, I hate to think of how many weekends have been 'stolen' from our family life.

After our crisis in March, and the ultimatum put to his work about having to stop the away work, or leave, he has been home most weekends (all bar one I think) and what a difference that has made. But there you go: "All bar one". There has had to be compromise - a midweek trip back to KL, and a 'one week trip' back to KL. I ran with these because even I realise it is pretty hard to pull out in the middle of a humungous project, and I am such an understanding, wonderful wife that he is lucky to have even though he lost sight of that there at one point. There have also been a couple of other mid-week jobs which involved being away - but midweek stuff I can cope with; the type of job it is means it is impossible not to travel to various jobs.

But this week is another compromise; someone else's project, and the other person who could do it is on 5 weeks annual leave and I'm pissed off and angry about having to compromise, because I feel like I'm being played for a fool. I made some ultimatums, because I damn well had a right to make ultimatums. But like WorkChoices, my 'fought for' rights are insidiously being whittled away...

Yes, it has been better. [Who am I kidding? - It has been fantastic.] And the thing is, I like it like this. Having hubby... Daddy... around... is normal. It's what normal people do. You get to do things together on the weekend.. even if it is just slothing around on a Sunday (which I think is ok if you've got up at 5 am to go ride your tandem together on a Saturday morning, and then spent the rest of that day with the girls' netball.)

Sometimes, now that the girls are old enough to be at home without us, we can do stuff like we did yesterday. We left them and went into the shops, because he needed my physical presence/moral support while he shopped for some jeans and a shirt. And so then, that achieved, we sat down in a cafe and had lunch. Out. Very nice.

Meh, so what right do I have to complain? My life has been, and still is, too easy in many ways. I haven't had to work. I haven't had to worry about money. Single parents do it waaaaay tougher. Most average families do it tougher - financially at least. Still, I'd recommend it to noone - not that many days, nights, weekends of the Daddy being away. Basically raising the kids (the eldest was 4, and the youngest not even born when all this away stuff started) half the time by yourself, but then having to switch back to 'normal' family mode when he gets home.

I always maintained that while he worked away, I was damned if I was going to try and juggle a job as well. He used to hassle me occasionally about getting a job (partly because he understood that my self-esteem actually needs a job; partly because I think he has found it a strain being the breadwinner.) He only admitted in March that it would have been too stressful for me to have been working all this time. (Logic tells you that he would have had to have taken on some of the home-load.)

But as the 'stay at home parent', anything that the kids don't do that you expect they should (or that he expects they should) you blame yourself for. Because you're the one with the frontline job of handling all that, and any failure feels like a failure on your part. Throw into that mix me being the crappiest housekeeper in the world, and I keep seeing "F" on my report card, rather than all the Distinctions and Credits - because people do commend our children for being 'lovely kids'. (And smart. And good at sport. And good friends. Etc etc.)

I just keep seeing the negatives. I see myself as being a failure, because I don't work, and what's more, I don't have a clue what I could do for work. (To fit in with 'being there' for the kids the way I want to be.) Look at all those mothers who are working AND their kids are nice kids, doing well at school, etc, etc!! And, yes, I hate the fact that I don't bring any money into the house. Big F for Failure.

I try my hand at volunteer work, with the school.. with the netball... and then I get the shits with it (usually one or two people start getting right up my nose), so then I pull this avoidance stunt with it, as I did over this weekend. On Saturday I refused to go into the netball clubhouse as I've felt obliged to do all year because I am secretary. I sat on my arse in a chair on the sidelines, and watched both girls play their grand final games. And I felt guilty. And then I didn't go to the senior presentation dinner.

And, then... the most trivial issues with the kids make me feel like I am failing them with the basics - and if I can't get the basics right, how am I going to handle any Serious Stuff that comes along down the track? The eldest yesterday, when charged with hanging the load of washing in the machine on the line when it finished, hung them out dripping (which I only discovered at 5pm when I went to get them in). Because, patently, I wrongly expected that by 14 years old she'd have absorbed, somewhere along the line, that washing, when the machine has finished is not dripping wet. Because it spins the water out. And she has hung out washing before this. And that lately I've had to keep going in to rebalance the load because there is something wrong with the balance mechanism on the washing machine. The machine goes *bang, bang, bang* and stops. Then beeps. And I curse, and I go in and shift clothes around, and start it again. And sometimes repeat that till it works. And I haven't actually stood her there and given her a lesson in getting clothes out of the washing machine, because I had credited her with more common sense than she evidently has. (And an ability to ring me up on the phone and ask what to do if she isn't sure.)

[And it's pretty hard for me to be teaching them any household domestics, because I am a really, really bad role model in that respect.]

And, the 12 year old has been mutilating herself, and I have been oblivious to it. We thought she was biting her fingernails.. have lectured and warned her about it... and finally this week I bought some of that foul tasting stuff to put on her nails. Then yesterday she stubbed her big toe, and we realised that she has somehow been mutilating her toenails... she has cut/ripped them back so far, that the surrounding skin on each toe is peeling, and on her big toe, with so much skin exposed, it is more vulnerable to stubbing. She can't explain what in god's name possessed her to do this, nor how exactly she did it. She used scissors, "once".. "about two weeks ago"... but wtf?!! I am freaked out that she must have some underlying psychological problem that is causing her to do this, and I don't know what the hell to do about it.

And now he's gone away for a week, which makes it hard to do the shared parenting thing- particularly over this trivial stuff.

So the way I handle it is to rebel with the household domestics (who has the psychological problem do you think?)... and wallow.

Perhaps now I've unloaded this piffle I can get up off my bum and get through the week with a more appropriate outlook. Any kicks up the backside as long as they are gentle, will be gratefully received and taken on board.

Labels: introspection, parenting