...motherhood sucks...

Seriously.

This gig can suck.  

Suck the life right out of you.  Suck the time and the energy and the patience and the... Yeah, that list could go on and on.  Let's. Just. Not.

Spring break started off on a high note.  Pacing back and forth at the bottom of the drive, waiting for Mister Man's bus to arrive and gift me back the simple joys of  "family life" for a blissful, solid week.

Ah, vacation.  Time to reconnect.    Time to rest...relax....enjoy childhood and parenting.  No pressure...no alerts or alarms or deadlines...

It started on a high note.  The bus pulled up...the boy hopped out.  I grabbed his bookbag and chromebook and lunch bag (as I do) and we hiked back up the drive hand in hand.  Into the house...already giggling through plans for the evening. (Boardgames and popcorn outside, to be sure!) empty the bag....open the folder...

Crash!  High notes and high hopes took a tumble.  For inside that "should have been empty" folder was a giant packet of papers, paperclipped because no staple could hold them all.  

Invention Convention

Over a dozen pages outlining  the upcoming science fair, chock full of deadlines and outlines and parental suckiness. 

Oh yeah, motherhood sucks. 

(I remember being a child.  A child with projects due.  That sucked too.)

So there went the break portion of Spring Break.  Right out the door.  Instead of boardgames and popcorn, we hashed out hypotheses and proposals on draft paper.  I won't bore you with the details, but a final decision was rendered the night before school resumed.  Cue Mami, typing away at the proposal long after Mister Man has conked out next to her!

The proposal was accepted.  A note from the teacher reminded my would-be inventor that this year a working model was required. 

Aw, hell!

Working?  Model?  Can I send in my old portfolio instead?!?

Motherhood sucks.  

I'm already laying the emotional groundwork for my son if/when this turns into his first failure.  Because it's May.  I rallied the troops (do the two of us count as troops?) and blasted through September, October, November.  I class-mom'ed it up in December and January and February. I pushed us through March and April with sheer determination and lots of allergy meds.  I have typed and cut and glued.  I built a German Village.  I painted set pieces.  I have yearbooked and costume paraded and lunch ladied my little heart out.  I have homeworked and cello practiced and created 25 individual German walled cities.  I have IEP'ed and argued and advocated.  I have put things together and torn things down and decorated the classroom and hallways and teachers' lounge.  I have served food and discipline and life lessons.  I'm all PTO'ed out.  

And now it's May.  And I just don't care anymore.  It's May and he's graduating in a month.  It's May and he's maintained straight A's since Kindergarten.   It's May and this freaking project is due on Thursday and it is isn't even begun.

Because it's May and I don't know how to build computer application enabled tech devices for special needs  kids.  I don't even know how to fake it.  And neither does he.

But damn it, there's that proposal already submitted and accepted.  There's that due date in red on the calendar.  And there's that "F"...that big giant stinking failing grade (the first one ever)  if I don't miraculously figure out how to help him build this fabulous, brilliantly theorized, impossible invention.

Tomorrow is Mothers' Day.

Guess what we'll be doing?

Motherhood sucks.

~Leanna