Dark night of the Soul (During daylight hours)

I see that our latest drama has gone up on the blog, this morning while leaving the house we noticed that our pet of 10 days had disappeared, he shed his skin on Monday but since then nobody has seen him (before you ask of course we checked the tank really well). My son denies letting him out either on purpose or accidentally and my hubby denies there is even the slightest possibility that she slipped out while he was misting the tank with water or removing his shed skin from the tank (hubby is the only one who opens tank), my nearly four year old daughter couldn't open it, but is also too scared of the snake to want to!



So it's 8:40 on a Wednesday evening and I'm in bed with the covers tucked in ALL the way around the bed in case Sammy decides to call, while my hubby is downstairs constructing various snake traps! The original plan for the evening had consisted of me doing some knitting while watching a film with my husband, followed by hot tea and cheap biscuits!



I want to cry, I just want to throw in the towel, this is the snake that broke the camels back! I have had an awful six months...I mean really bad, stuff I don't and won't talk about in the blog, I've had my third (unexpected surprise) child (he's 6 months tomorrow, meaning I'm 34 and 6 months tomorrow) and I feel like I haven't stopped once! Seriously, I'm so tightly wound up the soles of my feet keep spasming cos I don't even relax them at night! I know I'm drinking too much and eating too much sugar, but I just can't help it. By the way, please don't comment on this post, I don't want advice on what I should eat to feel better or how a bicycle ride could improve my mood no end! So after a Manic Monday and a Terrible Tuesday (complete with four year olds birthday party at which my daughter walked in cat shite and walked it in through the house and the rest of the party, I cleaned cat poo with one hand while holding my baby on my hip with the other).



I awoke this morning looking forward to a nice morning, a trip to Dundrum or a visit to the local coffee shop for me and the baby, and instead was faced with a missing snake, a trip back to my sons school to interrogate him about said snake, my husband being two and a bit hours late for work as he searched for the darn thing. I had an unexpected trip of an hour each way to pick up two dead "pinky mice" to lure Sammy out of hiding, combined with a visit to my mum for a cup of tea and a "well what did you think was gonna happen when you brought a snake into your house lecture", heavenly, all the time there is low scale grumbling from the baby and a fairly constant moaning from the nearly four year old I had picked up from Montessori at this stage. Then back over the city just in time to pick up my son from his afterschool activities, ran into the house, popped the dead mice in the freezer, gave the baby his dinner, watched a friend of mine have his Irish TV debut (bravo) all the time scanning the room for movement....then I had to get the now arguing two older kids and the baby into the car and pick up my husband (or "The Snake Hunter" as we now call him) and get home for the normal dinner, bath routine (tonight with added snake loose in house, totally free).





So at about 7 this evening I was trying to change the bed clothes (in case sammy had gotten upstairs) and I just couldn't, a wave of tiredness and defeat just flooded me, I couldn't figure out why I was doing all this, why did I give up all my dreams, my aspirations and expectatins? I cried, I really cried, I cried so hard the muscles in my neck cramped up, I haven't cried in a long time, the things that have been happening in my life have just stopped my feelings, but this evening they made a run for it. Now maybe you read this post and thought what the hell is wrong with this woman, nothing here is particularly difficult, her children are healthy, she has a husband, shelter, warmth, all her bits and pieces in the correct order? But I just can't take it any more, they say it gets easier as the kids grow, but my nearly ten year old is more hassle than the baby! So I've been doing this for a decade now, it's eaten away at my very being and I just don't know if I have the resources to keep going, what can I give when I am empty?



Today in the car, "driving" on the M50 I found my mind wandering to the post I was gonna do about the great escape, thinking how I could make it amusing (the fact that I was searching for the snake with a box of mini mint Viscount biscuits in one and is fairly funny). Then I thought of all the posts I've done on this blog and my own about my life and how difficult I find it, about the funny little observations I make to myself which actually are quite sad and unfunny, I think I'm kinda writing my experiences in the blog in a funny manner to make my life seem a bit more bearable, you know, the tears of a clown kinda thing?



If the job of stay at home mother was advertised who the hell would take it, manual labour, taxi, chef, prison guard, psychologist, doctor, nurse, priest and bloody skivvy! Who the hell would take it? Never mind the fact that the wages, hours and conditions makes slavery look like a cushy number! But no one mentions the loneliness, the emptiness the sacrifice. My heart lights up every time my kids look at me with love in their eyes, but myself, whatever that was is in a million little pieces, slowly disappearing.