Balance

You've got to find your balance, the lyrics say.
Lyrics which I am hungrily listening to right now. Trying to glean strength from, trying to somehow absorb, like so many UV rays from the sun into my skin.
Except not the kind that cause cancer.
You've got to find your balance/You've got to realize/You've got to try and find what's right before your eyes/
Finger 11 had it right. There's a lot to be said for balance.

5 pm brings with it the end of one work day and the beginning of another.
I come home tired and already feeling frustrated. I just wanted to relax a little bit, even for only a few minutes. But no. I get confronted, instead, by an angry mob of people, unhappy with my bun selection (of all things) for tonights meal- cheeseburgers (I mean, honestly, I didn't think I could really go wrong with that one). Kaiser buns as opposed to Wonder Buns. Well, how was I to know that one seeminly inconsequential decision like that could lead to a major uproar?
"Mom, we hate these buns!" Gage yelled, holding the offending bun as though it were a weapon of mass destruction of some sort, aimed at my head and poised to strike.
"You know we hate these buns!" Payton chimed in, almost on the verge of tears, as though, quite possibly, this was the worst thing that could have ever happened to her. Ever.
Honestly, in that moment in time I wanted to take the buns and cram them down the kids' little throats, imploring them "Eat the frigging buns I gave you". Truly, I could envision this. The crumbs falling from their mouths, spilling across their cheeks, mixing with the tears that would be rolling down. The sputtering.
Eventually, they would learn to appreciate that a bun is a bun.
But, alas, I decided to go for a little walk, opting to skip my cheeseburger dinner and also the scene I saw unfolding, which would quite possibly end with a 'domestic disturbance' call to the po po.

Anyways, I decided, after much walking and some thinking, that what I need is some balance.
Sometimes the pressures of working full time combined with parenting three kids just brings me to a boiling point. I mean, it just seems to be so relentless. From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, there are these little mini fires to put out.
A phone call from day care "Payton's not doing very good..." (she's on antibiotics now, after shadowing me at work for about two and a half hours yesterday).
Alex just put the toilet paper roll in the toilet. ("Well how did he... oh, never mind.")
The dog just knocked over the garbage can and now she's eating a container of sweet and sour sauce. ("Well how did she... oh, never mind".)
My baseball pants have grass stains on the knees and my game is in half an hour.
You have to sign this permission slip (as said permission slip is thrust under my nose while I'm driving to school) ("Well what is it for? Actually, nevermind, I'll just sign it. I trust the school board isn't taking you to a radioactive isotope display. And if they are, well. We'll worry about that later.)
Alex took a number two and tried to take his diaper off.
The dog ran away and she's across the street and she's barking at a little kid and the little kid's crying.
Alex just dumped his milk into his spaghetti ("Soup!" Alex proudly proclaims.)
And once: I think the dogs having a seizure ("no she's just coughing... oh, shit, maybe not." )
And so on and so forth.
Sometimes I feel like just letting the fire rage, or even a little like adding fuel to it, just to let the chaos reign as it so clearly wants to.
I mean, isn't that what they say? If you can't be part of the solution just be part of the problem?
I think it's something like that.
But.
You have to find your balance.
You have to realize.
And my balance is this:
One part working: one part family: one part chocolate: four parts booze.
Anyways, that is all for today.
I should be going.
To drink.