So help me sweet baby Jesus...

if these children don't go to sleep, and soon, I am going to LOSE. IT.

I don't know if my kids are good sleepers or bad sleepers when compared to all the other small people in the world. I would guess they're average to above-average. But I am below-average when it comes to dealing with them.

After 8 pm, I do. not. want. kids. I have no desire to be a parent after bedtime. I want an hour to sit on the couch and work, or catch up on emails, or veg out, or whatever, before I collapse. Just an hour. One quiet hour. After bedtime, I do not want to see or hear my kids again until sunrise. Period. I hate nighttime parenting, and I know I've devoted many a post to this before. I don't know if it's my temper, anger issues, general impatience with all things small, but I HATE being a mom at night. If you could feel the force with which I just typed those four capital letters - there needs to be a stronger word than hate. If a knife-wielding attacker came smashing though my window right this very minute, I would say to him "please please please slit my throat first so I don't have to listen to these goddamn children anymore!" I would volunteer for death and dismemberment before I would volunteer for nighttime parenting.

I am fairly certain that if my daily routine didn't involve fourteen hours of running in circles with barely time to pee, I wouldn't complain so much. I could catch my hour of quiet time at midnight - I wouldn't have to get up at ten til six every day. I could shower at naptime. Hell, I could NAP at naptime. But that's not it. My time is never my own. I run around after my own children while I'm home; I run around after 120 others while I'm at work. I stood in the open door of the bathroom for almost ten minutes today, having been waylaid by both a coworker and a student while on my way to pee on my way to stand out in the freezing cold for half an hour on afternoon duty. Seriously. An hour. That's all I want.

And instead, my children give me up, down, in bed, out of bed, need to pee, need to poop, drink of water, hungry, thirsty, tired, not tired, sad, laughing, one-more-story, move-the-cat, get-back-in-your-own-bed-now-young-lady bullshit. After 8 pm, I frequently pull parenting maneuvers that I'm not proud of. Why, just tonight, I've:

yelled
threatened
bribed
blamed
been generally bitchy

and that's just in the last two hours that we've been working on this. At this point, 9:23 pm CST, after a yelling (gar yaergh go back to bed now or else dammit), a threatening (no sticker on bedtime chart hence no ice cream at daddy's house this weekend), much grouchiness, and a cat-ectomy (why that accursed feline feels the need to sleep *on* the Tank's pillow, I'll never know), there is finally, maybe, quiet in there. I hesitate to get up and go check, for fear of disturbing whatever fragile balance may be in effect. I am tempted to sleep fully clothed, sitting up on the couch, so as not to walk on my squeaky hardwood floors and risk disturbing a child. Seriously. I am Hating This.

Send chocolates laced with arsenic. Please.