NOT QUITE WHAT I HAD ENVISIONED

Day 57 OT

I mentioned in yesterday’s journal entry that I was going out of town this weekend and would miss Kellen’s basketball game on Saturday. I AM the sort of mother who leaves her children two or three times a year to visit friends, or go on scrapbooking getaways …. I am NOT the sort of mother who feels guilty about it. Blaine takes perfect care of them (probably better than me, if the truth be told, since he’s willing to actually go outside and *play* with them, unlike me, who feels that feeding them and applying band-aids to bleeding wounds is enough to show adequate parental responsibility) and I know their world doesn’t stop turning simply because I go MIA for 48 hours.

I DO, however, feel great angst whenever I fly. Specifically, I worry that whatever plane I am on will fall out of the sky, plummeting me to a fiery (although blissfully quick) death and my children will grow up motherless. Or worse, with a step-mother from Hell because Blaine just couldn’t wait to get married again to someone younger, prettier, and skinnier than me.

And it’s not like I’m flying off to the Noble World Peace Summit, or to save the rain forest, or anything like that. I’m just getting away for a weekend of chocolate and gossip --- enjoyed, but not particularly necessary. So I feel anxiety whenever I fly, wondering if I’m risking the future happiness and security of my children for my own selfish whims. Although, as Blaine-Mr.-Logical so eloquently reminded me this morning as I was yammering on about it, “Look, there’s a much greater chance you’ll get killed in a car accident on the way to the airport so just shut up about it already.”

So, in the off-chance I am killed in a plane crash this weekend (I know, what kind of reasonable person sits around and obsesses about this sort of thing???? …. Oh wait, I know --- MOTHERS) I wanted this morning to be a wonderful, happy, loving, laughing time with my kids. That way, their final memories of me will be warm and affectionate.

I bought Krispy Kreeme donuts for breakfast as a treat. Can someone tell me why my 7-yr old son has not yet learned to chew with his mouth shut? No matter how many times Blaine and I remind him, he’s like Bessie the Cow chewing his cud at the dinner table. We even tried putting five nickels in front of his dinner plate and taking one away every time we caught him smacking, thinking the monetary incentive would be helpful. Nope, not a bit. Not one time did he leave the dinner table with a nickel to his name. This morning, after asking him repeatedly to please chew with his mouth closed, I finally turned to him and snapped “If you smack that donut in my ear one more time I swear I’m going to spank you!” Ah, that was warm and affectionate, wasn’t it?

Then, Brayden and I got into a fight because I was quizzing her for today’s spelling test and she didn’t know ANY of the words, because she forgot to bring home her spelling homework not once, but twice this week, which made me angry. So I kept quizzing her, which made her frustrated, which made her argumentative, which made ME insane. By the time it was over, she had stomped (literally, not figuratively) from the room muttering, “I HATE this family!” under her breath.

Then Kendrie decided she wanted to wear Kellen’s Old Navy sweatshirt (never mind she has an entire closet-full of clothes herself) and he said no. They must have bickered for ten solid minutes before I threw my hands up in the air (figuratively, not literally) and stormed out of the room, yelling, “I don’t care if you go to school NAKED, just get dressed!!!!” {That sentence doesn’t even make any sense! But that’s what they’ve reduced me to.}

Fortunately, we still had fifteen minutes before it was time to leave for school and we managed to salvage the morning. No-one was *laughing* when we walked out the door, but the tears and yelling had all stopped (theirs, and mine). There were even hugs and kisses when I walked them to their classrooms and said good-bye.

So the point of this journal entry is that if I do indeed die in a fiery plane crash this weekend (or in a car accident …. Thanks, Blaine, Mr. Voice of Reason) would someone please let my kids know that the crazy screaming woman who sat at their breakfast table actually did love them more than life? And that they better learn to chew with their mouths closed, remember their spelling homework, and dress themselves without arguing, or their new evil stepmother will eat them alive.


PS. Did anyone hear me on the Radio-a-thon for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society fundraiser this morning??? Did I sound like the biggest goober on the planet??? That's just a *little* too close to public speaking for me to be comfortable, but I really wanted to do a good job, in thanks for all the LLS does for families like ours!