peevish mama

This past week I was about ready to turn in my mother license.  I was horrible.  Crabby. Impatient.  Everything was annoying me, mostly my children with all their NEEDS.  If I have to rip open and dump another box of Annie’s mac and cheese into boiling water, I will start to scream and I won’t be able to stop.  Mac and cheese has become a total farce in our house.  I pretend to make them a meal (which I know I’m not because it’s just starch and fat and whatever corn-based Franken-glue they use to bind it all together).  They pretend to eat it (which they don’t, because they don’t actually like mac and cheese, and why would they?  It tastes like playdough vaguely infused with what an extraterrestrial would imagine tastes like cheese based on reports from planet earth).  I pretend that they ate it as I dump the congealed orange clumps into the sink.  And then we all pretend that the pretzels and cheese and popsicles and popcorn and watermelon and Doritos and granola bars and grapes that they eat the whole rest of the day are just snacks and desert, as opposed to actual meal substitutes.  Very bad.  Very bad, indeed.

But it gets worse.  The Tooth Fairy, that indolent, irresponsible, dental whore, has FOR THE SECOND TIME, failed to fulfill her duties to Saint James.  That slut was probably smoking a cigarette in bed with one of her cheesy dentists, her sack of quarters strewn over the shag carpeting in a fit of passion.  Or, more likely, she was on her hands and knees, her rump in the air, searching for all the baby teeth that fell out of her pockets when she was pretending to laugh at his teeth jokes.  The first time she forgot to show, I had to tell the kids to go back upstairs to look again and frantically threw a couple bucks into a big wooden urn thing we have by the fireplace, concocting some farfetched story that she probably had to rush out of here when Doctor Dash got up to pee.  Not that I needed any improvement, but parenthood has made me a pretty good liar.  Anyone who says they don’t lie to their kids is a liar.  

And this morning . . . this morning my heart is breaking because Saint James announced in a flat voice, scarcely moving his eyes from the Saturday morning cartoons, that the Tooth Fairy didn’t come.  Like he’s been burned by this dirty vixen one time too many, and now knows what the rest of the world knows: she’s a slovenly hussy and she can’t be trusted.  So, stupid, desperate, chastened me, I smuggle a couple bucks upstairs and throw them into his pillow, knowing it’s too late to actually take the tooth.  A few minutes later when I pretend to make this befuddling discovery, Saint James mutely takes the money and stuffs it into his red British phone booth piggybank.  

Best case: he’s puzzling over the possibility that she missed the tooth, like he missed the money the first time he checked his pillowcase.  

Worst case:  he realizes that the Tooth Fairy is a slothful slacker and a forgetful shit head.  

Worst-worst case: he realizes she is me.