Nap of Doom

In most jobs, you have some idea of how you're doing. If you are a teacher, are your students passing their tests? Or are they throwing spitballs at you and smoking in the back row? If you're a waiter, are you getting tips? Or do you always spill the soup of the day into your patrons' laps?

Being a parent is tricky. I honestly have no idea how good of a job I'm doing. And I don't know if there's any way to find out. Is it day to day life that matters? Am I a success as long as there are no battles and everything is kept quiet? Even if it means that I'm constantly feeding my boys M&Ms? Or is it the end product? I mean, I don't need for them to become superstars, don't really WANT either of them to become president, but how do I know that something I said at breakfast won't plant the seed for one of them to become a serial killer, or the next Ron Jeremy? Exactly. I HAVE NO IDEA! And I won't, because something, like killing someone, could happen when they are 40 years old, and they could still blame me, the mother, and I'll only know then, THEN, that I was an awful mother and completely messed up. But the truth is.... You Don't Know. I mean, even if you grow up in the same HOUSE... my mother had five kids. I turned out pretty normal, sure, but that doesn't mean it was a given. I mean, look at my brother JAMIE for crying out loud, is he a slacker, or what? (I'm kidding, because if you know Jamie, you know he's running for "saint of 2006")

Yesterday I found myself on the phone to my brother (Jamie, the slacker-saint) crying at what an awful failure of a parent I am. Seriously, I won't go into too much detail but try picturing a scene from a disaster film, may, say, Day After Tomorrow, when the big wave is coming, and the people are all screaming and scrambling and crying... or the Posiedon Adventure (the original, people, not the stupid remake), when the boat turns UPSDIE DOWN, and things are flying everywhere, and people are screaming and crying and yelling.... OK, you should get the picture. There was a lot of screaming and crying and yelling and object flying around, but also maniacal laughter and demon voices.

This was nap time. It took me TWO AND A HALF HOURS to get the boys down for nap. I, of course, was already having a "Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day" and this made it worse... And I just want to say THANK YOU JAMIE for letting me cry into the phone. Last night I got sleep, even though it meant turning off the TV JUST AS ER WAS STARTING and this morning I feel good, even though Nick threw up again at the breakfast table.



CHISTMAS SONG RANT OF THE DAY: WINTER WONDERLAND. This is a stupid song. OK, maybe not stupid. Maybe it was actually a nice song, at one point. Before every single artist in the world decided to record it because IT ISN'T A CHRISTMAS SONG! It's a WINTER song. It's a SNOW song. So it has become embraced because you don't have to be Christian, you just have to love snow. Guess what - I don't love snow. It's a really IRRITATING song that gets played between every single commercial break. And I hate it. I hate the stupid snowman part.