mother's day

the alternate title of this post is...i'm a brat.

i am very blessed. but generally instead of being grateful for the many, many blessings that i am so very unworthy of, i chose to wallow in self-pity.

mother's day is probably primo numero uno for self-pitying days. i blame hallmark for their sugar coated version of what mother's day should look like, but i accept that i'm the sucker who falls for their marketing.

i won't take you on a guided tour through the years of mother's days past, but i will highlight a few of my disappointments. tim, being the awful, mean husband that he is, failed to lactate or gestate for my first three mother's days, never allowing me a break for even one day.  ben and max, being the rotten children that they are, have dared wake up before my preferred hour of the morning (9) and have placed such burdensome demands as food and attention every! single! year! jerks.

yep, i get grumpy because i have to *gasp* mother on mother's day. i have to get up with the boys, prepare food, and parent them. tim sleeps like a log and the boys learned from an early age that i am much easier to pester out of bed if they want to eat or be attended to. when the boys were younger, i got up with them because even when tim did try to give me a break, the boys would scream and cry until i came to them, which, call me crazy but, i didn't find very restful. (they didn't appreciate that tim's style of parenting didn't allow them to be tyrants and expressed that through extreme mommy favoritism.) for the last three years, tim has worked on mother's day so yep, there's all that parenting i still have to do even though it's supposed to be my dang day to be a queen.

all i ever really want for mother's day is a break. basically, to not have to be the mother for the day. i want the house to wake up clean and go to sleep clean, be fed yummy meals that i haven't had to prepare or clean up, and not have to entertain or discipline the precious offsprings, unless i want to.

and because i don't get that, i pout and am resentful of tim and the boys for not giving me that. yes, i am a glowing example of sacrificial maternal love.

this morning tim got up with the boys and made a lovely breakfast for me. but because we chose to stay after mass and visit with our special adoration friend who has no children to celebrate her today, tim didn't have time to clean up the kitchen from the big mess that he had created in making that yummy breakfast before he left for work.

as i started in on the kitchen cleanup, i also started in on my annual pity party. "if tim would have gotten up earlier and tried harder, he could have cleaned up the kitchen before we went to mass. and he totally could have cleaned the house instead of staying up and playing video games after i went to bed." before tim left for work he thanked me for all the hard work i do for our family and said that he knew there was no way in the universe he could ever adequately express his gratitude. instead of appreciating his kind words, bratty mary thought, "well it would sure be nice if you would at least try to go to the ends of the earth to show me. or at least clean the house."

so as i cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and mentally added up my list of complaints, i started to feel pretty guilty. yah, tim could certainly do more to make me feel appreciated, but what was i doing to show the mothers in my life that i appreciate them. not only am i blessed to have a wonderful momma, but i also have an awesome mother-in-law and an amazing godmother. that is a lot more than many people have. maybe instead of pouting over me, me, me, i should invest my energy in showing them how much i appreciate them.

maybe instead of pouting i could pray for the single moms who very rarely get a break or mom's that are struggling with problems much bigger than mine.

and then there's those precious offspring that qualify me as a mother. maybe instead of expecting to be adored and pampered on mother's day, i should be thankful that i am a mother. how many women long for children or have lost a child?

the tragic conclusion of this long and rambly post is that the world doesn't revolve around me, although i totally think that it should. i know that i am a brat. i'm working on it, but apparently i am as good at training myself to be grateful as i am at teaching max not to bite.