Emzeegee Does Not Share Well With Others

I'm going to tell you a secret about motherhood which nobody else is going to tell you. To be fair it might be a secret about parenthood which is not specific to mothers, but since I only know that *I* feel this way, I can only speak for the mothers (which of course means that secretly all mothers in the world feel this way too.)

Disclaimer: all of it is a first world problem, all of it can be solved with better parenting, and I'm really just having a big fat whinge. But, hey, it's my blog and I'll whinge if I want to.

With that being said, here is the thing about parenting which nobody tells you: sometimes it really sucks to have to share stuff with your kids.

As mothers were are supposed to be selfless. We're supposed to want to give the children the shirts off our backs and the food from our plates. Actually, we're genetically programmed to do so - to protect them, shelter them, feed them, nurture them. It's fair to say that I do all of those things with great aplomb, but what I fail at is actually enjoying sharing everything with them. I just don't enjoy giving them everything which is mine, and I don't feel guilty about it. Sometimes I just want my own stuff to be MY OWN stuff.

So, it irritates me when I'm enjoying a (well earned, carefully considered, I-went-to-the-gym-to-justify-this) piece of chocolate or bowl of ice cream and one of my kids asks me for a bite and I feel obligated to say yes. Saying no would qualify me for the Worst Mother In The World Award, and I'd feel so damn guilty saying no that the ice cream would then taste like pencil shavings in my mouth. Worse still is when I put said treat down for a moment, and in that moment some kid decides to appropriate some or all of said treat for themselves. If they DON'T ask first I at least have cause to get shitty with them, and if they DO ask, see above comment about pencil shavings.

I can't stand the fact that if I'm not actually using my phone for some reasonable purpose (because contrary to popular belief it's not actually welded to me), my kids have pounced on it to play some idiotic bird-flinging game - so that when I actually DO need to use said phone, it's battery is flat and it's under a pile of clean but unfolded laundry, thus rendering it useless to me and the essential facebooking I need to do.

I hate that when the need strikes to have a Slurpee (which is fairly often for me) and the kids are in the car, I find it very difficult to buy one for me and yet nothing for them. Because if I DO decide it's only me who is getting a treat, I then have three plaintive cries for "just one sip, please?" and I end up with no Slurpee for me. Or only those bits at the bottom which require you to smack the bottom of the cup to get them out and you hope this does not end up giving you a Slurpee face washing. So a trip to 7-11 which should cost me less than $4 costs me like $15. Which is an expense I can't justify at the moment, so most of the time I do without or I just drink my Slurpees in secret like an alcoholic. I'm literally drinking Slurpees on the sly. How ridiculous my life has become. *dramatic sigh*

For my birthday last year my friends gave me a subscription to 'Who Weekly' magazine (in the US, it's 'People' magazine). It arrives in the mail on Friday, and was meant to be a way of forcing myself into some quiet, indulgent time every weekend. I figured if I had access each week to a deliciously trashy mag, I'd find the time to slow my life down just that tiny bit and enjoy that small indulgence. Instead I get home from a crazy week and my magazine has been read by all three kids ("Mum! Did you know Kim is dating Kanye?") AND it takes several askings of various innocent-looking kids before I can locate the damn thing....and then the pages are messed up. Don't they know that half the joy of a good trashy magazine is being the first one to crack it open?

It irks me on Sunday afternoon if they complain that it's been a boring weekend and they did nothing all damn day. Fuck off. I practically give my right kidney for a Sunday when I don't have to do anything, because on Saturday I've gone to work most of the day while DH has ferried the kids (and the cakes) all over town. I hate sharing my quiet Sunday with people who want to be out and about doing stuff. Want to do something? Go vacuum something or go play with parked cars. Just bugger off and stop trying to share my space.

If I buy something not-so-great for me and bring it home (read: ice cream)...chances are either I've got to eat it in stealth mode with DH, after 11pm, and wash all the incriminating evidence right then and there OR I'll go to get some out of the tub only to find that the tide on the tub has gone out and I'm scraping in the corners and praying I'll find an errant chocolate chip because the crafty little buggers got to it first.

There are plenty of other things I hate having to share with my kids. The socks my son helps himself to from my drawers. The squishy soft winter scarves my kids 'borrow' from my closet and then I never find again. The perfectly over-washed pyjamas the kids feel the need to cuddle in between my wearing them so that I can't find them from one night to the next. The toilet rolls which run out every ten seconds because apparently my toilet is the best one in the house. The hair balls in my shower which are left their courtesy of my DD who is trying to grow her hair down to her butt. The $10 in my wallet I was saving for a nice lunch with a friend which then goes to the "oh Mum I forgot I needed $10" emergency late on Sunday night. You get the idea. There are myriad little things which I'm supposed to share with my kids which I do not enjoy sharing AT ALL.

Life with children is filled with blessings, and adventure, and love, and blah-dee-blah ridiculous amounts of awesomeness. It is. Most of the time. It's just that sometimes I'd like to eat a bowl of ice cream without having to be hiding behind the couch. It gets kinda stuffy back there.