Cure Worse Than the Disease

The flu has invaded our house...again. I naively thought we had been through the worst of it last week when Tessi dropped like a ton of bricks for 36 hours and I got a headache so bad I couldn't lift my head.  Sadly that was just a warm up and now we're back on the illness train. Just in time for the school holidays and Ted starts his new job. Excellent. Honestly, I epexted nothing less. All good stories start with "Dad was out of town" or "we were all trapped in the house" -the universe is always watching and ready to get you when you can least handle it.

This week the flu/bubonic plague/SARS virus, whatever it is, slams back into us robbing Tessi of her gymnastics camp; which she was trying to weasel out of anyway and take a day of cricket camp from poor Teddy; who really did want to go. Of course I am coming down with something as well because i was up most of the night with Himself, all these kids keep breathing their germs on me and I have no immune system.  Trying to get ahead of the game I brewed myself a cup of Horehound tea, recommended to me a while ago by a dear friend as a cold remedy.  About a month or so ago Teddy was sick and I made him drink it.  He got better, very quickly. It was like one of those hawked miracle tonics but only it worked!  I was singing the tea's praises to anyone who would listen. Now I should mention that Teddy carried on and whined about the taste being bad.  He took 20 minutes to drink a small cup and acted like it was hemlock or something. So I really didn't pay that much attention to him. I mean, this is the kid who whines about grilled cheese sandwiches tasting funny because the wrong plastic cheese was used to make it.  Be serious.  I wasn't impressed.  I've heard that its not pleasant from other people, but really how bad can it be? I've drunk Milwaukee's Best before and survived. I wasn't worried.

This is where arrogance can be your enemy sometimes. When you think you've reached a point that your life's experiences have trained you do handle everything, Life laughes at you. Laughes at you in the form of Horehound tea.  When I told Teddy I was going to drink the tea he smiled for the first time in more than 12 hours. Head splitting open from the pain of a headache and a fever so high he can barely move. Yet the thought of me drinking this tea brought him back from the dead and nearly dying. "Go ahead Mom, you'll love it. It tastes just like regular tea," this was my first warning as to what was coming. He is never that happy unless someone else is in misery.

Taking a sip, I realized that I have joined a rather unfortunate group of people. A group I call the "tasteless honest." Over the years I've met many different kinds of people in many different places. There is always someone who is brutally; if not tastelessly, honest. For example, ever been around someone who drinks something and says, "Ugh, that tastes like horse piss?" Now, usually I stand and wonder, how do they know what horse piss tastes like? If they do honestly know, why would they admit it? It's something I would be proud to share, even amongst close friends.   Now personally I've never imbibed such folly; Milwaukee's Best notwithstanding, but after this mornings drink, yes, I think I do know what horse piss tastes like. So I can join this group I suppose, with a clear conscience. I hope there are jackets.

It's been two hours since I've drunk the tea. Sadly there are no miracle improvements yet. Unless you count the smile on Teddy's face every time he looks at me and asks me if maybe Tessi shouldn't try a cup.  I just glare at him and tell him to blow his nose and shut up. I think though, that will be my one and only cup of Horehound tea.  Not sure if I'm brave enough to try another cup.  I say this not because it was too vile - again former Milwaukee's Best drinker here. It's that I'm not sure how I would feel about myself being the person who claims to know what horse piss tastes like AND went back for another cup. Usually I make fun of those types, rather vocally.

Job Performance Issues

Back after 2 weeks away.  No, I didn't go anywhere, the kids were home for 2 weeks.  Here in Australia there is a break of a few weeks in between terms or marking periods as we say back home.  It's good in that they don't have 3 months off all at once but it's bad in that they have 2 weeks off at once.  I say that not because I hate my kids....no I don't.  Just because I'm not the mushy gushy mom that can't stand being away from Precious Snookem's longer than a few hours doesn't mean I actually hate my kids.  What I hate is the pack of feral creatures they become when they are trapped together.  Oh like for example at home for two weeks.

Every mother (well every HONEST one) will tell you that even though they will walk through fire for their kids listening to the constant fighting, whining, crying, and general bellyaching will make even the most patient saint a psychotic hose beast beast bent on mass murder.   Alright, maybe not all mothers will admit to the last part but I do.

However even living through rough holidays and enduring ENDLESS hours of Adventure Time and listening to those damn One Direction songs - good God, REALLY?  - only a mother is crazy enough to still have nurturing feelings towards the people causing the strife.  I guess it's our version of Stockholm Syndrome.  But instead of caring for our captures we're caring about people who's so reason to get out of bed is to piss you off.

This is not normal, I understand that.  If an adult spent half as much effort lying to me, ratting out a fellow friend, picking fist fights with yet another friend or asking me the same bloody question 15 times a minute, just to hear my voice, I think you'd agree me that severing ties is required.  Or if ties couldn't be severed holding the person in open disdain would be expected.  AT THE VERY LEAST no rational person would expect me to been over backwards with concern for the little twit at the slightest provocation of fear or pain.

Unless you are a mother.  Then all rules are different and you are the bad person if you snap and tell the little cherub in question to piss off.  Yes, yes, I understand that there different rules of engagement with battles with children then with adults but this goes beyond the pale.  Any other kid pull half the crap on me that my kids pull and I'd be plotting against them too.  Just in a kinder, gentler fashion.  No blood, but a bit of public humiliation when I work Canteen.  I know my boundaries.

But my kids....that's an entirely different story.

Yesterday, after 2 weeks of not being allowed out of the same room with Connor, watching her needle and pick fights with her siblings, again listening to that damn One Direction and on and on about her new obsession with Big Bang Theory episodes, we all reached the wall.  At the end of a long day in the CBD and me furiously trying to make grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner - after Sasha ate the cheese I was going to use and serve up dinner to bored and angry kids Connor would not stop asking me which acting voice to use when saying, "What is going on?" (side note - I have NO damn clue where that came from.  She literally walked into the kitchen, stopped between me and the sandwich press and demanded the different ways of saying the phrase.  What.the.Hell?)  and I snapped, "Oh Christ Connor, look at me.  What am I trying to do?"  And my insanely annoying daughter responded with, "I know, shut up and go away"

Being the calm, responsible person that I am, I handled that comment the best way I could.  I burst into sobbing tears.  Not the pretty ones.  The tear gushing, snot-flying, splotchy ones that hiccup out of your mouth and when you try to talk you sound like you're speaking a really guttural foreign language.  Those tears. 

I have never in Connor's life said that to her.  Not once.  But since I have thought I was immediately consumed with the fear that I had scarred her for life with...what...the aura of the phrase?  I dunno, but I knew that I was instantly a bad mother and my poor baby's emotional well being was endangered.  No matter that she would have driven a tee totalling monk to drink these past few weeks and there were times I was hoping Teddy would haul off and crack her one....it didn't matter.  My mere thoughts had seeped into her brain and therefore I was bad.

This right here is how motherhood is different from other jobs.  I have never in my life felt as bad at doing a job as I do most days with motherhood.  I didn't feel that bad when I burned entire batches of popcorn when I worked at a movie theater, not as useless when I screwed up some exam scores for a testing center I worked at nowhere near as stupid when I told people the wrong law when I was a paralegal.  But have my own kid say she knows to shut up and go away?  Yep, grounds for dismissal. 

Only I can't get canned.  I can't lose this job.  So here I was last night, sobbing how sorry I was that Connor thought that and that I never said that and I didn't mean it.  Which of course made her cry because she didn't understand why I would be upset.  Another parenting win.

So if I had to self evaluate myself for the last term's productivity I'd have to give myself a Developing, with room to Improve.  I'm hoping management gives me a bit of sabbatical to reevaluate my commitment to the company.  Some place with umbrellas in the drinks.