The one where she loses her temper...

I'm ashamed to say that I lost my temper in front of my daughter this evening. I didn't lose my temper *with* her - she was not the source of my troubles. She was merely a witness, and I must say, I think it scared the bejeezus out of her.

To fully explain this, I have to explain that at the moment (and at several other moments during the course of our marriage) my husband is working on a different shift than mine. So, while I get up at 5:00 a.m., head out the door with the baby by 6:30, go to work, come home by 5:30 p.m. (on a good day), my husband goes to work at 2:00 p.m. and comes home by 1:00 a.m., if he's lucky. After that, he has to "unwind" before bed, so he usually crawls in at around 4:00, waking me up just enough that I can't fully enjoy my last hour of sleep because I know I only have an hour left to enjoy my sleep. Then, to sweeten the deal, he has to stick to this schedule on weekends, because lord only knows that if he gets off schedule, the world will fall off its axis and stop spinning entirely.*

At any rate, I haven't seen my husband (let's call him P) since Sunday night when I went to bed. I haven't spoken to him since Wednesday (I think... maybe it was Tuesday?). We leave each other little notes on the kitchen table, but those hardly count as quality communications. So tonight, I'm sitting, eating, feeding the baby, watching the Food Network, and I hear this strange tinny voice... I think, who in the world is talking? Radio is off, it's not the TV... Oh. It's the ANSWERING MACHINE. And it's P, calling me, thinking I'm not home, leaving me a message on said machine. And I MISSED IT.

At this point you're probably saying, "Idiot woman, didn't you hear the telephone(s) ring?!" I'm certain that I would have heard the telephones ring, had not every single phone in the house (all cordless) been completely dead - no battery charge at all? Oh, and where were all the phones? Side by side, where someone I know likes to leave them, because he is physiologically incapable of a) putting something back where he found it, and b) leaving the phone on the charger.

To ice my pity-cake with some irony-flavored frosting, I fished out my cell phone and called him back immediately, only to discover that he was out of the office again. I had missed him - twice.

My anger at this stemmed mostly from the fact that the phones didn't ring because they were dead and it was All His Fault. My sadness stemmed from the fact that I detest single parenting and just want to spend some damn time with my damn husband once a week. As though a five minute phone call during dinner was really too much to ask. At which point I lost my temper and started crying.**

This totally freaked out the Bear, as it's not something she sees Mom do very often, so she started crying too, and we had to sit on the couch together and weep and rub our snotty faces together for something like half an hour. And she makes the most pitiful Sad Face, which only made me cry more, since I was the one who provoked it.

I've been dealing with some emotional issues lately, in case you couldn't tell. I'm not normally the sort of woman who bursts into gales of tears over an answering machine. But, that's a whole different entry, and I'm not feeling up to it at the moment.

I'm off to my bed (alone) with a nice cup of tea and some comfort reading. ::does best Scarlett O'Hara:: Tomorrow is another day.

*I totally understand that it's hard to change sleep schedules overnight, but for godsakes, I used to stay up until 4:00 with him just to have some time together - and I was pregnant at the time! How effing hard can it possibly be to get up on Saturday morning and hang out with us?

**This is something that some women can do quietly, even gracefully. Not I. When I cry (not very frequently), it sounds like a banshee riding an elephant with a head cold. It makes noises that would frighten the bravest of children.