Nectar of the gods

I keep hoping that my boring life will get even more boring and I will run out of material.  Unfortunately, it does indeed seem the gods enjoy taunting me.  They keep thinking I will just lie down and give up.  But I just won’t.  I can’t.  I never will.  Truthfully, I’m a bit amused by the sport.  I’m competitive by nature.

Yesterday was the last day of school for the two small darlings.  As we walked out yesterday, a flood of emotions grabbed me by the throat.  Middle darling will not walk back through these doors again.  Next year he’ll be in kindergarten, wearing his little uniform and being a big boy.  My babies are growing up.  God, help me to enjoy these days, because I know I will blink my eyes and they will be gone.  It’s so hard to enjoy them sometimes, because I’m so overwhelmed by them.  I’m so afraid that it’ll be the one thing I’m truly sorry about, in the future.  That I was just too overwhelmed to extract every bit of the sweet littleness from them while I still could.

We all went to watch their adorable end of year program last night.  My boy is such a clown.  I’ve tried to warn the elementary school, this child is nothing like his quiet older brother.  He is silly.  He is relentless.  He is selfish.  He doesn’t take no for an answer.  He talks back.  Constantly.  Questions authority.   He wants more, demands more, and can never be satisfied with what he has.  He is me, only little.  I know these qualities will serve him well as an adult, when the gods hand him his ass, over and over.  But right now, these qualities stress me.  They cause me to do that thing, where you squeeze their little arm, lean in real close, grit your teeth and hiss some mean mommy words.  We need to find our way, me and this little guy.  He is the sunshine in my life, and the shit on the bottom of my shoe.  I worship him and cringe simultaneously.

He chose our dinner last night (pizza) and then we went for ice cream after the program.  We really had a nice night, and he was comical with the excitement.  It was past bedtime when we got home, little darling had begun running fever, and the termites were swarming everywhere around the bright lights on our front porch.  In this city, the spring months are woeful for termites.  They swarm like there’s no tomorrow around every light source, and they are fueled by the fact that every house in our neighborhood is nearing a century old.  We spend the nights in darkness, because they’re attracted to the lights.  I put my key in the door while simultaneously batting away the disgusting creatures that were landing in my hair and beginning to crawl on my arms and face.  I pressed the clicker to open the door, and BAM.  The gods began to laugh.  And I began to panic.  We were locked out.  No key could gain us entry.  Because someone pressed the little locking button on the inside of the ancient mortise lock.  And it means the door can’t be opened.  Not even with a key.  I guess it’s what people used to use a million years ago, to lock their doors at night?  Why would anyone ever think this is a good idea?  Ordinarily, we could just walk to the back door and let ourselves in through the back.  Only when I got robbed last year and the loser thug left with my keys and my vehicle, Dave’s brother changed the deadbolts on both my doors.  Because he is just like Dave, I was left with a slight problem.  I couldn’t unlock the back door from outside.  The key wouldn’t turn.  Something was wrong.  And it never got fixed.   I stood there, on my front porch, with my chest heaving.  My heart pounding.  With termites swarming and crawling all over us.  The darlings are tired, one is sick, and there is no way in.  I had no choice but to break glass.  A part of me wanted to break every pane, go insane, rip my hair and then set it ablaze.  Of course I didn’t.  The darlings were already frightened.  So we broke into our own house, quickly turned off the alarm and began sweeping up broken chards of glass.  I get the pleasure of forking out grocery money for someone to fix it, and change the lock on the back door to one that actually facking works. 

I am fodder to the gods.  I get that.  I imagine myself as this little puppet, on a string, and they play with me.  I laugh and spit in their faces. The universe delights in my resilience.  Today, I start directing awesomeness my way.  I demand it.  It will come to me. Gods be damned.