I Didn’t Cry Over Spilled Milk…

…instead, I lost my effing mind over a missing gallon of milk after I got home from the grocery store.

Yesterday, a friend asked me how I’m feeling. My response was “getting more and more pregnant, if you know what I mean. Wonderful and bleah all at once.” I’m entering into that dead zone of pregnancy where I’m much bigger and harder to steer, and therefore always mildly uncomfortable. There are three months left, which seem interminable. Yet it’s much easier to picture a baby inside me, and I can also feel him almost every minute of the day. He’s quite a mover. The whole situation is an awkward delight.

But one of the side effects of the discomfort is extreme bitchiness. I keep it in check for Kyle’s sake as well as for Stew – after all, the man does a lot of work around here, I must admit. Over the weekend, however, I came to a point where I didn’t feel like being a Mommy anymore, not at all. I’m sure I’m not the only one who ever feels that way. The best moms out there (and it’s all relative, isn’t it?) must have their moments in which they want to drive away and never come back.

It must have been the lack of sleep (Kyle’s been waking up at 12:45AM every night, heartburn, and that omnipresent friend, General Discomfort) and the interrupted nap, because by Sunday evening I had lost all patience with everything in my vicinity. Kyle seemed determined to push my limits -“Kyle, no! Kyle, no! Kyle…!” was all you could hear around my house, as Kyle wrote on the furniture with milk, or stuck small toys into the air purifier, or knocked the dog’s water bowl over, again.

Then at dinner time, as I lovingly prepared a 1-course meal of packaged cream of broccoli soup and tuna sandwiches (PLOP that soup into a pot! SLAP that tuna onto some bread! SLAM those plates down on the table!), I discovered the missing milk. I paid $2.89 for a gallon of milk and by God did it piss me off that the milk did not make it to my house. That was the last straw. Meanwhile, Stewart was obsessing over his damaged plants – the last few nights have seen cold enough temperatures to cause Massive Plant Death here in the valley – and kept going outside and not listening when I called him and Kyle in to dinner. So I finally just lost my mind and screamed and screamed and I had no idea what I was even saying.

Dinner was lovely.

Kyle wouldn’t TOUCH his soup and I could only get him to eat his tuna sandwich if he sat in my lap. Stewart ate as fast as he could and then went back to the grocery store with my receipt to fetch the withheld milk. By the time he got back, I wasn’t any better – in fact, I was worse. The very cushions on the couch were annoying me. My stupid maternity pants kept falling down and of course that annoyed me. I had cleaned up Kyle’s toys and he proceeded to dump them all over the floor in almost the same pattern they lay in before. I just wanted to crawl into bed and make it all go away. So at 7:45, which seemed like a reasonably late enough time, I did.

Whenever I bitch and moan like this I am quite aware that I don’t have that much to complain about. Sometimes, I do feel like I’m actually losing my mind. Thank God I have a pathologically sane husband to keep me in check. He took over, giving Kyle a bath and putting him to bed. The next morning, all was well. The moral of the story is: Mama needs her sleep, while she can get it. Ha ha.