Venting

Most days living in a house meant to comfortable accommodate 3 or 4 people with 10 people doesn't bother me and it doesn't seem to bother the kids, but some days it drives me absolutely nuts.  Today (really the last few days) has been particularly difficult.

On Friday Grant and I went to some garage sales.  Found some great stuff!  Great deals on stamping and scrapbooking supplies.  Baseball cards.  A few other odds and ends.  But there was this adorable dresser, well not so adorable as it was but I could see it repainted and re-purposed.  But this small dresser absolutely would not fit in our house.  The is not an inch of wall space that could accommodate it.  No place to put this gem that would have been so handy in storing the things that we use all the time.  Art supplies, table linens, my ideas for the piece were limitless, but my space is limited.  Stupid that a piece of furniture could put me is such a funk.  So I was feeling trapped in this small place.....depressed by our current circumstances...and then today the problem magnified.

Today Grant and Jacob fought.  Not the typically back and forth banter of brotherhood, but physical and loud, the kind of fight that at 42 years old I dare not get in the middle of.  Both boys are well over 6 feet tall and outside of yelling there was nothing I could do to get them apart.  The fight broke up quickly but Jacob's temper raged verbally for probably another 15 minutes and all I wanted to do was make them get away from each other, to get away from me, to each go to their own space and cool off....but THERE IS NO PLACE FOR THEM TO GO...there is NO PLACE in this little house to give them the space they need to just collect themselves.  I finally convinced Jacob to just go outside and sit and try to collect his thoughts.  He argued that it wasn't even quiet out there, living on a state highway makes for a lot of traffic noise most hours of the day and night,  I couldn't rebut what he said, he is right.  Even with the woods behind the house and the nature that surrounds us there, it is loud when you are outside.  You can't even lock yourself in the bathroom for a long hot shower or a soak in the tub because inevitably someone will need to use the toilet while you are in there.

Jacob and Grant made up fairly quickly, probably less than 30 minutes from when it all started, but I am still feeling funky from all of it.  I feel like such a bad mother because we are in this house, we are in the situation that we are in, because of choices that I have made or because of actions that I have or haven't taken.  I feel like a complete failure.  My funk is fueled by helping Emily do some research for a paper she was writing in her English class that lead to me reading comments about poor families breeding children they can't even feed.  I wanted to scream and shout, "I didn't make the choice to have these children knowing that we would be where we are today".  Things were comfortable, life was good, we were living the dream....somehow that dream morphed into a nightmare where we live paycheck to paycheck, spreading what little money we have across bills we can only hope to pay, shopping for food on manager's special and thankfully clothing the kids with hand me downs or on an occasional shopping trip funded by their grandmother.  Most days this valley we are walking through doesn't really get to me, I find an oasis wherever I can and I keep moving forward, but today it IS getting to me, it is BREAKING me.

I am not spewing all of this out there so that those who are doing better than we are feel bad or feel that they can't take joy in the things they have or the good fortune that they encounter or be happy around us.  I just need to get it off my chest, release it to the world so that I can carry a little less baggage with me on this journey.