My Rant by Konnie Enos

Being a mother I do make efforts to accommodate the needs of my family, pulling me every which way, but sometimes I wonder when my needs get met.

When my husband has insomnia and stays up half the night he makes me get up with our boys to get them to school in the morning, because obviously he can’t drive. He crawls in bed and starts snoring while I’m still trying to drag two boys, both bigger than even my husband, out of bed.

If I happened to stay up late trying to get something done, which is usually reading or writing (those are both important) I still could end up taking the boys even if my husband was asleep the whole time I was awake.

Don’t get me wrong, he usually has an “I don’t feel well” reason, but so far I’ve only been able to get out of driving them once. (Ok, it was for most of a week, but it was pretty hard to drive when I couldn’t use my right arm.) All my other reasons for not wanting to take the boys haven’t held up.

If I’m tired well so is he and he manages to be snoring when we should be leaving with the boys. One time I had to take them in my nightclothes even though my husband was fully dressed because he was snoring and I didn’t have any time to get dressed. And he has never accepted that I’m busy at 5:30 in the morning and don’t have time to take them, even though my day can be so packed I often have to start at a dead run as soon as I’ve got the boys out the door and I don’t get a break until I can finally go to bed that night, around 10.

I guess my problem is that men just don’t understand.

He sees me spending a great deal of time on my computer and probably figures I’m doing just what he does all day. Surfing the web, not much of anything and certainly not anything important unless he’s decided to learn how to repair something or like right now, grow something.

The thing is I don’t surf the web.

I get on, check a few key sites, read the headlines and maybe an article or two if the headline grabs me then I deal with my emails and get to work. I track our finances and pay all the bills. Then I write, when I can get the muse talking to me. And now and then, when I can’t get my mind on writing, I’ll play some of the solitaire games available on this thing. If I’m not on my computer there’s my handcrafts. I’ve started a new afghan. Then all the chores, errands and otherwise dealing with the kids.

The only time I remotely dawdle around is the few times a week I get on Facebook, where anybody could lose track of time, which is why I try to limit when I’m there. I don’t have the time to waste.

I guess I’m just frustrated right now because my husband’s mad at me for not showing any sympathy for his poor arthritic knee that he’s limping on.

All I can see was other than walking to and from that car, he didn’t need to use that knee to drive the boys to school and he’d had two full night’s sleep plus he tends to take naps. Me on the other hand, if I get a nap, I’m sick. Plus in the last two nights I’ve been trying to write and ended up staying up late so I’ve managed may six hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. Who do you think should have been driving the boys this morning? Certainly not me.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day. Please, I could use one today.