When the prep work for my job pick up the week before I have to start, I get a little crazy. I'm trying to spend as much time with my kids as I can but I also have people counting on me to do certain things from home. So when I get a new draft of a script, this shortly before shooting, I have to rearrange my day around breaking it down. The trouble is, my kids don't understand that.
Before I had kids, I hated this time before work. The dread of knowing my life is about to change drastically and not knowing how well I'll adjust. We have a lot of new faces this season so it's not exactly like I'm going home. In many ways, I'm starting all over again and that's never easy.
So on that ominous note, I'm also going crazy arranging child care, interviewing more sitters for the fall and generally trying to get everything in order before I go back in the trench work life of 70 hour work weeks 60 miles from my home. Yes, I'm so lucky I have a job but trying to juggle it all often feels like if there's a hell, this is.
Today, I really thought I couldn't handle it anymore and I still haven't fully recovered. My kids have barely eaten today, in part because I haven't had time to go grocery shopping and then right when we were ready to go, in came the new script.
I met a fabulous sitter for the fall yesterday and went ahead and hired her today. We talked at great length yesterday and I feel lucky, but shortly after I hired her and she accepted, her requests started texting in. I sure do with we felt comfortable discussing these things face to face these days because texting sure eats up a ton of time. I hope it works out with her but I'm not sure she fully understands how TV schedules change constantly. She wants her "schedule" and I'll give her one but it might change drastically every other week so what's the point of getting locked into it now? But I have to go into this with positivity because she's great but I also know these babysitters have me over a barrel.
I love my kids but Oh to be C and never, ever have to arrange child care. He can go to work and earn money and never have to interview sitters, call references or deal with sitter demands and requests.
As the primary caregiver, I enjoy a relationship with my children he will never have. I get this. I am usually happy in my role. Today, I have to remind myself of this because I'm so thoroughly and completely overwhelmed.
I wanted to be a writer, I'm not. I wanted to be in a happy, stable family relationship, I'm not. I wanted to find a different job, one that would enable me some level of flexibility in terms of my schedule. I don't think that will ever happen. When I finally managed to drag my kids to the store today, I really thought I'd start screaming and never stop. Elena won't potty train and I'm tired of trying to get her to do it. If I let her run around in underwear, she pees. I finally thought we were getting somewhere last week when trapped inside by the heat, she actually spent one entire day accident free. The following day she peed everywhere and now refuses to get on the potty. If I stick her on, she does nothing. After six years in diapers, I really don't think I can handle diapers anymore. I hate how much space they take up, how she just lies there while I clean up her crap, how she's not even trying at all.
Of course the store had toys and of course the girls cried because I wouldn't get them any. Of course walking out of the store involved my having to haul Elena across a parking lot because there was no room in the cart with all the paper towels and diapers we need to clean up after her. Naturally on Friday, the traffic was atrocious and the humidity made it feel like it was 100 degrees.
I screamed obscenities at other drivers in the car and scared the girls with my bad behavior. I laughed at myself and told them I was acting stupid and they should know by watching me never to act like that. But inside I know the truth. I'm a failure at everything, even motherhood. I honestly felt today if I had anyone, anyone who wanted to raise my kids, I'd let them.
Eliza cleaned the playroom all by herself today while I timed the script. It's even clean enough to get a vacuum in which is something of a miracle. It was all motivated by her desire to get a certain toy and now she's demanding we return to the store immediately for her reward, a reward Elena really can't share in because after three months of trying, I'm really sick of the fact that she won't even try to use the toilet. But I don't have time to go back to the store, I don't have time for the 10,000 things that have to get done. I don't feel like making dinner and we ate out last night.
That's motherhood. Being a failure and still not being able to walk away from this job. Tomorrow will be a better day. It has to be.
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