Today

Today I'm snotty. I'm sneezing and coughing and cloudy-headed.  Everything aches.

Today Little Man wants my full attention. He wants to keep me completely engaged in his two year old world. He does not want me to share my time with The Girls. He missed me over the weekend. He wants make-up hours. So he pulls their hair. He climbs up to the school table and throws pencils, papers, binders, scissors, etc…He pretends to poop. He says "I pooped!" so I go to change his diaper, no poop to be found. I say "You didn't poop" and he giggles and says "Fart." and then blows a raspberry at me.

Today The Girls do not want to get back in the school routine. They dink around. They hem and haw. They ask ridiculous unrelated questions and have arguments about who was the last person to use the blue plate and whose turn it is to sit in the chair farthest from Little Man. They fail their assessment. Not because they don't know the answers, because they were talking while I made lunch instead of focusing on their work.

Today  I returned to the kitchen after being called out to the garage to help with school work to find that I had left a plastic toddler plate on the burner just recently turned off. It was now a puddle of neon green stink.  I said "FUCK!" Not a loud angry fuck. And not a laughing, isn't that crazy sort of fuck. It was a fuck that you say when running away to hide under the covers and crying isn't an option.

"What, Mama?" Little Man asked "Happened?"

"Never mind."

"Something stinks!" the girls said. I can only imagine how bad the smell might actually be in here. I smell it a little and my nose is clogged so it's probably horrific.

"fuck." Little Man said "fuck-fuck"

"Don't use that word!" I told him in a mad tone. The lip came out.

"Why? Why Mama?" His lower lip trembled and his eyes were huge. "WHYYYYY?" he began to sob in earnest. I broke his heart.

Today I sat down right there in the kitchen on the filthy floor that hasn't been swept or mopped since I left last Friday. And I held the baby while he said "fuck" and cried for me. And the girls wandered by and took their plates of food and sat at the table without a word about the chairs.

Today I want to quit. I want to give up.

All of it.

Today I called you at work.

Today you actually answered.

Today it wasn't enough.