Yay! I'm not alone!

I mentioned before...it's been rough...a rough couple of weeks, especially. It doesn't help when you run into someone that says, "You are so amazing...the three kids...a pending move...doing it all alone...blah blah blah." Seriously, what do you say to that? "Yeah, I rock!" No, you just think about all the times you yelled at your kids this week, and think, "if they only knew!"

So, I read a blog now and then, can be found at http://thebackorderedlife.blogspot.com/. Sometimes her posts are lengthy, but they are also real and humorous, and a warning...not much in the way of hearts and flowers.

Her recent post summed up exactly how I feel, especially right now...TODAY. And exactly how I feel when someone that doesn't have teenagers, or at least not MY teenager, says something fluffy and sweet about how wonderful my kids are...and I hope she doesn't mind me quoting her here...

"However, my kids are all in very challenging places right now, and it's tapping me out, folks. They're awesome kids. (Why do we always feel the need to clarify that point? I mean, you never hear a mom say, "Well, the problem is, we shoulda tossed that one in the river on the way home from the hospital. Saved the taxpayers a lot of aggravation and freed up a bed in the big house.")

But each one of my kids is grappling with some major life-transition stuff, and I'm the sounding board / punching bag / crystal ball gazer who, guess what? has less of a clue than they have. These are grown-up choices, and many of them will require a great big leap of faith that, frankly, I can't take for them. They'll weather it all just fine, and by this time next year Hallmark will be a safer place to be on Mother's Day.

But meanwhile, it was pure torture to sit through church and hear moms whose oldest children are EIGHT tell me that motherhood is the closest anyone can be to God while still on earth. I'm telling you, there are days when ONE of us is flirting with a face-to-face with the Almighty, but somehow I don't think that's what the speaker had in mind.Another wonderful bit of wisdom I heard a couple of times this weekend was, "Live in the moment." Seriously? Live in the moment? Which moment would that be, exactly?

Any of the hundreds of moments where one daughter is telling me that I'm the meanest, most heartless slug ever to sully the title of "Mother" because I suggested that her life plan of joining a Korean boy band was perhaps a little unrealistic?

Or how about that moment when another daughter can't be asked to pick up her room or take a turn with the dishes without passing through the seven stages of pissiness?

Should I just take up residency in the moment where I'm seeing via ParentLink that my 7th grader hasn't done any school work since the bronze age?"

OH.MY.HECK. She's living in MY house! And, I've lived through all of her moments with just ONE of my kids...I'm really struggling to find a way past her anger over having diabetes.

I have, however, two lights at the end of this tunnel that are helping me through. One, Dennis will come back. And, two, I'm working on getting my daughter into that Korean boy band...