I’m lost.
I flounder around every day in a muddle of “parenting”, “housekeeping”,
reading, and distracting myself with electronics. The first two are in quotes, because I don’t
think I’m doing either one of them particularly well. I used to be a pretty good parent,
documenting all the semi-relevant occasions with photographs and taking the
kids on diversionary field trips, but I have a really hard time caring any
more. It’s not that I don’t love my
children; I do. They are my life. But I’m slacking on the job. Probably because they would rather have me
leave them alone most of the time. (That
is, of course, until the very second they need something, at which time I need
to be immediately accessible.)
I am the only one who cleans my house. My roommates are pigs of the first
order. You wouldn’t know it just by
walking in my house, because I wander around all day picking up the remains of
the things they’ve left behind.
Half-empty water glasses are everywhere, laundry is in piles wherever
they stripped off their clothes, dishes are piled by the sink (or washed in a
half-assed way so that I have to wash them again), labels and wrappers and
containers and set wherever they ran out of product to encase …
A good parent would kick their ass and make them pick all
that stuff up, but … I don’t want to fight with them, and I feel like a naggy
bitch when I have to tell them over and over and over to do simple things. And I
don’t want to take them places, because I’m the only one who pays, and they’re
probably going to complain that it’s boring or too hot or whatever. So what’s the point?
I read, which is great, but every five minutes or so, I set
down my book and pick up my phone to play Words with Friends. Sad.
How can I chew out my children for sticking their faces in a device (or
two) when I tend to do the same thing?!
I have no husband around (and when he’s around … well, if you read the
blog, you know he just pisses me off with his face) and no friends to speak of,
so I distract myself constantly with bullshit.
I don’t know if I’ve written about this before (and I’m too
lazy to go back and find out), but two of my favorite movies are A Good Year and Under the Tuscan Sun. (I am also partial to Sideways and Bottle Shock.) What the first two have in common is
beautiful scenery of European vineyards (the second two are Californian),
beautiful people, beautiful accents, love, and wine. I haven’t been in love for so long that I
want to have this huge romantic adventure in a place with fabulously brown,
foreign people. I watch these movies and
I place myself in the situation and daydream about the possibilities of
uprooting myself in favor of sweeping coastlines and fragrant vines and
celebratory harvests.
The truth is that I’m too much of a coward to leave my life
here. BUT: I truly envy people who live in a place where
there are no distractions. Places where
television is sporadic, and maybe has three channels. Places where WiFi zones aren’t every single
place you are. Places where children still romp around imaginatively
rather than gathering in groups to stick their faces in screens and take
pictures of stupid shit they happen to be doing. Places with culture and flavor and ambience.
I guess I’m being nostalgic or hyperbolic or something; I
just long for things to be simpler. I
wish for days when my children weren’t so jaded about life based on the
bullshit they see on tv and on the internet.
I wish that Ridiculousness wasn’t a show and that The Kardashian’s would go
fuck themselves. Privately. I wish that Honey Shit-Face (or whatever that
little fat girl’s name is) wasn’t a person who was celebrated by American
society so that I could show my children that doing something with your life could be construed as valuable and contributive rather than
just stupid and entertaining.
In that, I guess I’ve failed. Both for them and for me.
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