The boys and I had one of those days. It was on the heels of a stress filled week. Oh and dad left town for the weekend. My favorite description of what happens when dad leaves came from my oldest when he was all of 6 years old. “When dad’s not here it’s like a door is cracked open and the anger gets in.” We function all week long with him out the door at work for long hours. We live for the weekends when there is time for us all to be together. Or let’s be honest when we are equally numbered one child to one adult. There’s just less waiting around for needs to be met. I should have seen the cards stacked up against us.
The other piece of this puzzle is, as you may have read, WE ARE MOVING. This is the perfect opportunity for every last neurotic nerve in my body to kick in to high gear. Clearly there is no moment to sit still because there are piles of shit everywhere that need to get in to boxes so I can sanitize every inch of this place to erase the filth that is clearly eating away at my damage deposit (as we speak). So to say I was present as a mom, would be a huge stretch.
So, when Saturday showed up and the internet went down (we are addicts in this house. Everything we do, enjoy and love, at home, is generally found on line.) It all fell apart. We couldn’t function. Everyone was in tears. I may have yelled, not at anyone but out in total frustration. It all hit the fan. We were a mess. A yucky un-pretty mess.
We need a way out a serious intervention. A slurpee intervention. There may have been some gambling involved. We hit up the 7-11 for slurpees and scratch tickets. It was like magic. We sugar coated that big ugly mess that was at home eating our happiness. We took a chance on winning big, we slurped up artificial flavors. Slowly, we returned to a calmer state. And in that moment each person was given the right to demand a slurpee intervention at anytime during our move, really it will probably stand true for all future meltdowns. Sure we knew the messes where gonna be there when we go back home. But for this right now moment, we were feeling all the good parts of being alive.
Stress is a part of life. The control I have is in how I handle that stress. And that’s what I wanna pass along to the my boys. And slurpees and scratch ticket are perfect for just that. I might go as far as to say Slurpees and Lottery tickets are a symbol of how I want to live my life. I want to indulge in the sweetest moments and take chances, even when the odds are against me.
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