Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Tea That Broke The Camel's Back

Its sad, and slightly amusing, that one tossed batch of sweet tea can be the trigger that made me fall apart.  To be fair, I've been falling apart quite a bit lately, and I know some of that has to due with not being on my medications. The medication battle is an ongoing one.  I forget. I have to plan on feeling sick for one to three days in order to start back up.  That's if we have the money to buy them... which, when we take an impromptu four day vacation to Carlsbad and spend $700 on hotels, we are bound not to have the money... but that was only the most recent unnecessary expenditure that found its way ahead of meds in the priority lists.  Oh my goodness we are so bad with money. So so bad.

Back to tea.  I had just brought the kids back from a failed attempt at geocaching.  They were tired, disappointed, hot, and did I mention tired?  I had been so excited to open up this new adventure for us, and we didn't even find the cache. In fact, by the time we got to the right area the kids were so tired and we were so far from the car, that I knew we couldn't even spare the energy required to hunt for it. Not to mention I wasn't sure it was even still active, since my attempts at signing up for a geocaching.com account and loading the site onto my Android had failed miserably.

I sent the boys up to play with devises in bed for quiet time, and spent a good 30 minutes getting Sara to sleep after one of her epic screaming and crying fits.  And then I saw that Dan had tossed the sweet tea I had just made. Not good enough. Again. I get bored with routine. I can't eat or drink the same thing endlessly, and so I had tried to switch things up. First I made a batch of sun tea using blackberry tea for half of the tea bags.  I think its delicious.  Dan does not.  So I promised him I would make another batch.  Only, when it came time to add the lemon and sugar I remembered that I had used the last lemon on the blackberry tea.  Suddenly I had an idea that I thought was brilliant!  I had been using lemon oil in my water to add flavor, and thought it would be a perfect substitute!  I tried one glass first so as not to spoil the whole batch, and it tasted perfect!  Or so I thought.

About Two hours later Dan took another sip of his tea, which I had noticed gleefully that he had been sipping away at.  But something in that one particular sip caught him awry, and he twisted up his face and scrunched his nose in dissapproval.  "Did you use lemons that had maybe gone bad when you made this?"

Are you serious? I swear no one else on the face of this earth would have been able to tell the difference between a few drops of lemon in his tea instead of the juice of two lemons. GAH! For some reason this irritated me to no end, but I didn't really let it fester until after the geocaching fail. Suddenly I  found myself feeling like I am no more than wasted space.  Good enough to maybe keep the kids alive, and occasionally put passable food on the table.  But other than that, I fall short everywhere.  Not good enough at housekeeping, not good enough at laundry. Definitely not as good at cooking. Not good enough at keeping the kids on task.

This is a huge ridiculous pity party. I totally get that. But aside from getting myself out of the rut of negativity, how can I stop feeling like I fall short, especially from Dan's perspective?  Some days I feel like we are doing it. We are making it. We are spending family time, having game nights, laughing together, laughing with the kids, and then some days I feel like we are a ticking time bomb. Faking it for as long as we can until the facade finally cracks, or time runs out.  I have been so negative lately that I have ditched facebook for at least a month in an effort to stop myself from blabbing my negativity to my friends.  I have even become too much for them. They would of course never say it, but I feel it.  And if I were to say that to them they would be put in a position to tell me I'm wrong whether they mean it or not. And even if they did I doubt I'd believe it.

In order to try to get back to positivity, and living in the moment, I have decided to sort of shut the world out for a bit and focus on my family.  I suppose I had some pretty valiant images in my head of what that might look like, and our geo-caching fail this morning snuffed those out pretty well.  But I need to keep it up. The change isn't going to happen overnight. My attitude has created cycles within the family that will take time to unwind and undo, and if I give up at the first failure, or even the second or tenth, those cycles will never be broken.  For now I will come here to lay out my struggles and vent my darker moments, while posting successes and positivity in the more public places.

Here is what I need to remember as I take this time of refocusing:

1) No matter how useless I feel, taking myself out of the picture will never help my children. I may feel like I am failing them, but being here allows the opportunity for good, while removing myself from the equation is only one possible outcome. Negative.

2) I have not been talking to God, or spending any time in prayer.  Before I run around trying to prove myself, I need to spend some time with Him. Reflecting, searching my heart, and allowing Him to provide me with strength and purpose.