Is she moping around in the dark like..... nobody around here. Hmm-mmm.

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Kill.
Me.

Please. Do it now.

I have spent the past hour listening to Miss O scream at me for one variation on the "I can't possibly take a nap alone" theme or another. First the screaming because she wasn't in the backpack. I was laying right damn next to her and she was still screaming.

Put her in the crib. More screaming. Got her remotely calm and quiet and try to step out. More screaming. Stepped back for some pats and soothing, tried to leave, more screaming. Sat with head pressed against crib rails, calmed her down. Moved to bed. More screaming. Calmed her again.

Tried to lay down on the floor to give my back a break. More screaming. Calmed her down again. She was nearly asleep, I stepped out. More screaming. Mind you, at that point it was 2:00 and I hadn't eaten lunch. Closed door, let her scream, took a few bites of my now-cold frozen dinner.

Went back in. Calmed her down. Realized I have to pee. Badly. Laid on bed and talked in soothing voice, she started to konk out, I stepped out to pee before my bladder exploded, but left the door open so she knew she wasn't "alone". More screaming.

I decided to leave her in there a little while with the door open, but she's still screaming and not calming down. We're at the 50-minute mark now and I have. had. it. I need to get so damn much stuff done because I was sick yesterday, including preparing for a great job interview tomorrow, and she sleep sfine in a bed at her dad's so WTF?!?

I've gone back in, tried to calm her, she won't sleep and you know what? She can just scream for a few minutes while I type all this out and attempt to decompress. Because right now? I'm inclined to let her scream until bedtime, I'm that sick of the battle.

Added to that, I've wrapped up my taxes and thanks to Dave taking both girls as dependents, claiming Head of Household and me having to claim half of the damn economic stimulus I supposedly got, I'm down a boatload of money and feeling damn pissy about it. He should get the dependents, since he has actual income and probably needs the help they provide as deductions, but damn, I'm just frustrated with giving up so damn much money. None of it is his fault, per se, it's just easier to blame him than the headless entity of the IRS.

And Miss O is still freakin' screaming. And I can now add hollering "lay down and go to sleep!" to the list of things that don't work.

...

Today is going to go down as the day I can't believe I didn't throw myself in front of a goddamn train.

It's 8:30. I have an interview tomorrow at 9 that I have been trying to prepare for all day. But you already read how well trying to get some alone time today went. And now O is awake - again. For the second time in 20 minutes. I spent an hour getting her to sleep. I get her nursed down and asleep, I walk out, she is up 5 minutes later. And I'm going to put my fist through a freakin' wall here in a minute.

This isn't even a little fair. How the hell am I supposed to shine with no sleep and/or no prep?

When I was in there this last time, I just wanted to scream and cry and kick something because it's just one of those days where I get to pay and pay (sometimes literally) for the damn divorce and I just want to grab Dave and shake him and ask him why the hell he was such a cowardly weasel and why the hell he did this to me. None of this is my idea of a good time - the single parent gig blows sometimes, I've been screwed royally on taxes and lost a huge chunk of what should have been my nest egg (whole 'nother story that I'm not sharing with the world at large, suffice to say one small oversight on my part = major screwage in my retirement fund) - and now I'm scrambling to prepare while I deal with a fever and a wracking cough. All of this is his fault. All of it.

Rationally and in the "not a few bubbles out of plumb" part of my mind I know that isn't a fair assessment of the situation, but with my internal pity party going full bore, it's hard to be anything resembling objective. I just want to curl up in a ball and cry and feel sorry for myself. But O is coughing again, so I'll probably just have to stop mid-cry and go deal with her anyways.
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No, I don't think "Ugh" is the magic word, if one would call it a word and even then certainly not a magic one.

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Someone please explain to me why it's even a little bit fair that my kids are always up before 5:00 ... I wasn't sleepy until around 11:00, then it took me forever to just doze off, when Miss O woke up around midnight. And probably hourly after that. 5 hours of ridiculously interrupted sleep is just not acceptable.

If someone could also remind me that I hate the concept of letting my kid cry themselves to sleep. Remind me a lot. Because at almost 16 months, there is no earthly reason this kid should be waking 5-6 times a night. Last night it was more like 8-9 times, as she woke up 3 times before I went to bed.

If she didn't sleep better (and later - until like 7:00) at Dave's, I wouldn't be quite so annoyed. But karmically speaking, my sleep shouldn't be the one targeted if she was going to be a sucky sleeper at one house and not the other.

And of course, Bean woke up loaded for bear, throwing a whiny-crying-hollering hissy fit when I told her no to chocolate before real food, then ramping it up a few notches when the banana she was eating 'broke' and wasn't all in one piece. Seriously. As if that changes the taste or anything. She screamed "no!" at me a few times when I told her to pick it up off the ground after she threw it there, so I ended up carrying her, kicking and screaming, to her room, tossed her on the bed and made her stay in there until she could mellow the hell out.

Magic word? Harumph. I'll take civil words. Hand to god, if all these books I'm reading don't give me some better coping tools, Bean's going to be a gift with purchase on eBay before she turns four.

I'm tellin' ya, I almost look forward to having to resolve conflict and deal with difficult people at work again. I cannot imagine a single situation I won't be able to handle, as it's unlikely that I'll have to toss a screaming, crying coworker over my shoulder and put them in a time out. Or deal with "no!" screamed at me repeatedly. Or have them spit at me when they don't like what I've said. I'm going to be the Zen Mistress at work, the one who can handle any sort of Joan Collins 'tude without getting ruffled.

It's hard to hold a grudge, tho, when the littlest one toddles in here, turns my chair to face her and beams up at me. And it's especially hard to hold a grudge when the big one is at school for the day ... yay for preschool!!

I took my taxes over to HR Block yesterday for their "Second Look", and I'm just flat-out getting hosed. Ugh. I'm most pissed about not being able to claim student loan interest because the statement has just Dave's social on it. I'm paying it, it was charged to me in the divorce decree, but it's his to deduct. And since he makes more than they allow for the deduction, no one gets a break. My advice to anyone contemplating divorce is to talk to an accountant first. We skipped that part, and we both got hit hard on stuff. So, accountant. Definitely. Especially if you have a bunch of assets to split and a damn student loan that can't be assigned to anyone else.

I watched my expected return get chopped in half because of that flippin' student loan interest ... I'll get over it, but I'm still cranky about it. Grrr ...

On to something less aggravating - validation from the American Association of Pediatrics for me having kept Bean rear-facing until she was 2: http://aapnews.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/30/4/12-a ... Miss O is still rear-facing and I had been loosely considering turning her to the front, but now she'll stay RF until at least two as well. And since she's such a teeny thing, I may leave her that way longer. She's usually got Bean in there with her to give her someone to look at and to keep her entertained, as well as a mirror that she can see me in, so it shouldn't be too hard to keep her RF.

There's also a Stonyfield Farm recall, affecting a few runs of the 32-ounce fat-free yogurt, for a "minute amount of food grade sanitizer" - http://www.stonyfield.com/
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