This old familiar feeling ... a rant.

I'm at the end of my rope ... again. I spend entirely too much of my time feeling like this: Frustrated, Angry, Beaten. Like my entire life is just futile. Every time I turn around little 3 year old M is making another huge mess for me to clean up even when I figure this time for sure she'll be occupied or her brother or sister will notice she's up to something. Nope. Not this time not any time. It's always the same thing ... why it is I keep forgetting that she appears to be the child that is bound bent and determined to put me in an early grave I have no idea.

I know. She's 3, she doesn't get it. My 6 year old son gets it, kinda, and my poor 11 year old daughter has the sense to bow her head and weather the storm. But M? Nope she doesn't get it. Take today (Oh please just erase the whole day from my mind. Please!!) I have spent the day productively for once .. .checking on her(not often enough sadly... never often enough) and then going about my work. I'm not relaxing ... I'm working.

She's drawn a great huge black line on the wall near my bed, she's ripped 80% of the crust off the fresh loaf of bread I made this morning, with the last of our flour I might add, and she's smeared peanut butter on the floor I just mopped today after neglecting it for over a month. She also spilled a drink that her sister gave her(the same sister that I let stay home this afternoon because she has a cold and felt so bad she was crying).

So when she was supposed to be watching a movie that she asked for M was mucking about in the kitchen ... wrecking stuff. While I was reading on my bed and taking a well earned rest. Now a short 10 minutes after I was just upstairs ranting about the mess and the undoing of my work A and M are running around playing and K is asking to come down here after I told her already she was to spend the afternoon in bed if she felt so bad she couldn't go to school.

And me? I'm still pissed right the heck off. I have even more cleaning to do now. But why do I bother to clean???? The kids don't care. M certainly doesn't care. She'll pee on a rug quicker than any 3 year old I know ... my house currently smells so bad to the un-adjusted nose that my Mom won't even come in to visit me. I still need to clean the carpets ... again for the third time in the last 6 months or less. I need to clean the walls because my kids seem to have no concept of the fact that we draw on paper no matter how many times I tell them or how many times I throw out all the crayons in the house. So I'm the one that ends up mad and upset and feeling like just when I was getting my head above the sea that is the housework that M for the most part just pushes me under again. I yell, I cry, I plead, I feel like tearing my hair out and I do more work or I do no work or I make some plan that I think will help. And Nothing Helps. No matter how many times I complain to my friends or try to calm down, nothing helps. I never hit the kids but I always feel guilty for yelling for losing it, for sending them to their rooms when it's me always me at fault for not watching them closely enough ... not thinking around the corners.

I guess I better go clean some more ... it's not going to do itself y'know. This isn't helping either and what words of comfort can any of you offer me that is going to solve the problem anyway or be anything more than a band-aid on the problem?

Cass :( :(