What Happens When Mommy Leaves For Work...

Ah, summer. 

The days of bike rides and trips to the park, of water gun fights and playing the iPad outside instead of on the couch. The days of the house smelling like an oddly enjoyable combination of outside, sunscreen and smelly shoes, of a steady pile of beach towels and grass stained clothes on top the washer....

And this.

This, my friends, is a picture of my soaking wet, fully clothed four year old, sent to me at work with a text from my husband reading "No, the answer to this picture is not that we jumped in the pool or that he is that sweaty. Any guesses?"

Now, had I not missed the string of group messages between Joe and my mom outlining what had transpired while I was in a meeting and just opened up my messages to see this, I might have participated in this little guessing game. 

But the fact that I had missed 10+ messages and saw nothing but this picture and the last text from my mom, which asked where Blake was when all of this was going on, threw me into full on mommy panic mode. 

This week sucks. This blog does not.

This week sucks. 

And I feel bad for myself. And I have been spending my fair share of time doing so.

And then, when I'm in the midst of feeling bad for myself, I hear this seriously annoying voice in my head saying "There are people with far less than you who are having a better day than you are..."

Ugh.

And so, I ignore that voice and move on to my next internal temper tantrum. And right when I am in the middle of basking in all of my self pity glory, I hear that damn voice saying things like "You may be having a bad day at work, but at least you have a job to go to." Or, "It is better to have a messy house than a house with no train tracks to trip over." Or, better yet, "It is better to have a messy house than no house at all."

Ugh.

Again.

I mean, I know all of these things. And even when I'm having a week like this one, I truly do appreciate all that I have. But sometimes you just have to feel bad for yourself.