Tuesday

I have accidentally gotten into a funk. It started with McDonald’s discontinuing their Hot Mustard sauce, which is the only reason I eat there, and then they replied to my email on the topic by informing me that other customers preferred a different sauce and that they (McDonald’s) looked forward to serving me soon. Even though I’d just said I wouldn’t eat there anymore if there was no Hot Mustard sauce. They can look forward to serving those OTHER CUSTOMERS soon, I guess.

Then Paul and I tried to choose a paint color, and I realized that I hate not only all yellow paint colors but ALL paint colors.

Then I snapped at three children last night over things that were not at all snap-worthy, and after they went to bed I felt bad about it and thought, “I am making their lives hard.” Then I felt sorry for them in a way that was really more sorry for myself (imagining them as adults and how they’d remember me and how they’d describe me to others: “Well, I guess she did her best, but? Maybe she wasn’t really cut out to have children”), and then I felt even worse for turning pity for someone who’d actually been wronged into pity for someone who hadn’t. Then I resolved to DO SOMETHING about the snappishness rather than sitting there feeling bad about it afterward. Then I drew an analogy between that sort of resolution and the resolutions that come right after eating too much (resolutions which vanish as soon as hunger reappears), which led to anticipatory despair. I have done what I ought not to have done, and not done what I ought to have done, and there is much crabbiness in me.

This morning the coffee is backfiring and making me feel like I’m exhausted but can’t blink, and also irritable at being bothered while I’m trying to sleep. The day feels full of tasks I’ve done a million times before and still have to do millions of times before I’ll be done. And then I think, “Furthermore, according to those who have gone before, when I AM done I will MISS these tasks and feel sentimental about them.” This has already happened with the kindergarten drop-off process, which is a badly-organized, exasperating hassle and which I did for two years and which I couldn’t wait to be done with. Now I drive past as parents are dropping off their kindergartners and I think, “Aw.” EXACTLY AS IF I MISS IT. WHEN I KNOW FOR A FACT I CANNOT POSSIBLY MISS IT. I miss it the way a person might think, “Ug, I kind of wish I were home sick in bed, just reading and drinking cups of tea” until they actually ARE home sick in bed and thinking about how it’s impossible to remember how bad queasiness feels.

36 thoughts on “Tuesday

  1. StephLove

    So I know you live north of me and maybe aren’t even expecting it to be spring-like yet, but this sounds like the late winter blues to me. We had our 10th (TENTH!) weather-related school cancellation yesterday and I just did the bare minimum of parenting and spent a lot of the day in my bedroom with the blinds drawn, listening to an audiobook and ignoring the children, who truth be told, didn’t seem to miss me much. Then today as they were going to school I thought of all the better ways we could have spent that day that didn’t even occur to me yesterday. The younger one’s having a birthday party on Saturday and there are plenty of things that need doing and she would have enjoying doing with me. Hindsight…

    Reply
  2. Rachel

    Gosh, I never really comment, but have to comment on your last paragraph. What is with that phenomenon?! You literally could not pay me any amount of money to have another child (well, I suppose there is a magic number out there somewhere…). However, my third, and most difficult is finally becoming a little less difficult as she nears 2 and I suddenly am sad that she isn’t a baby anymore. WTF? I used to count down the days until she could walk, talk, play with the other kids, etc and here I am all sad about when she was a baby. Also, I always sort of romanticize being sick, but it is never as nice as it sounds. I have usually used up all my time off taking care of sick kids so I end up having to work when I am actually sick.

    Reply
  3. Lawyerish

    Maybe there is something in the air, or maybe it’s this ENDLESS winter, but I have taken a wrong turn into Funk Land over the past couple of days, too. I can’t describe it with the accuracy and wit that you can, but my funk ultimately comes down to feeling the impossibility of several major mid-life-type situations/decisions that are not really even decisions at all because they don’t involve legitimate choices other than ones I’ve already made (actually, one is a sort of decision, but one that feels so enormous as to be paralyzing so I can’t even really think about it without wanting to hide). Which is to say that I feel, as I periodically do, that something big needs to change or I am going to go out of my mind, but I don’t see any options that are (a) realistic, and/or (b) certain to result in greater contentment (that is, pretty much every option in life is likely to leave me at least SOMEtimes feeling as if I am going to go out of my mind).

    This isn’t really one of my current issues, but by way of example, when it’s March and it’s still windy and freezing every day, all you can think about is how brutal it is to live in this place and how nice it would be to move to a more temperate climate, somewhere with more sun and warmth and less horribleness (never mind that a week ago, I was chin-up, stiff-upper-lip about the cold since we know it WILL eventually end, and if one more person snarks that in a few months we’ll all be complaining about the heat, I will lay waste to all the lands). So you look at real estate in warm places and fantasize about living in a cozy house near a beach somewhere. As if you could ever ACTUALLY just pick up and move, never mind jobs and school and community and so forth. And as if there wouldn’t be huge trade-offs that would ultimately bring your happiness level back to the set point where it normally is, so why go to all that trouble? And your brain reminds you of all this, but STILL all you can think of is the sun on your face and sand under your feet and getting out of your blasted routine for a while.

    So! Now I am craving hot mustard sauce and I have never even had it.

    Reply
    1. H

      Yes! The past few weeks I’ve been fantasizing about taking my family on a surprise trip to Hawaii but that seems to end in a downward spiral because: 1) we can’t afford it; 2) no length of time would be long enough; 3) my husband and I don’t have enough vacation days to go for an extended period of time; 4) I would miss my dogs and they would go crazy being away from us for a long time; 5) a trip would clearly result in coming home and I think it would be far worse to come home from Hawaii and endure the inevitable Post Vacation Funk. THEN, I’m stuck here in this godforsaken endless, cold, snowy, brown, dirty, gray winter and THEN I’m angry with myself for not appreciating what I have.

      BLECH

      Reply
    2. Nancy

      I don’t know if this helps or just proves that no one can ever be happy, but I live in a warm climate and I hate the hot weather and daydream about moving to somewhere where it is cold all year. No doubt if I actually experienced a long winter with ice and snow I would soon change my mind.

      Reply
  4. Matti

    Yep. And I couldn’t sleep from about 4:00 onwards. It was nice. Extra time to pity, and fret, and thrash. Also, my 11 month old is at the stage of eating where every. flipping. thing. goes on the floor. Even if he wants to eat it. I just cannot. I have two older kids. I know it’s a stage, he won’t be doing it at his wedding, but I don’t see myself EVER getting sentimental for it either.
    Going shopping with my mom today to try and pretend it’s not the never ending lousy Smarch weather.
    I do have paint choosing advice. Go in person. Each pick a paint chip in secret. Compare. It’s fun. Which makes you less likely to kill each other during the next step. Then go back, pick a paint chip together, but only give yourselves 10 seconds to do it. Together. Then, go the next step down in intensity b/c it’s yellow. Yellow regret is real. It’s a real thing.

    Reply
  5. Misty

    The kids have probably forgotten the fussing already.

    I had this instance, once, where it snowed here. (I know, right?) And I was video taping the kids outside and then for some reason, I felt like my oldest wasn’t watching his younger brother properly. I put down the recorder to fuss at him for what felt like forever, just berating the heck out of him. Years later, I still felt really badly about how I spoke with him that day for being 7 and not watching *my* kid properly.

    Turns out, I didn’t turn off the recorder. And when I happened upon it and listened to it again, it wasn’t anything at all like what it was in my head. It was appropriate and gentle and didn’t go on forever and ever. I think that things sound more vicious in my head because that is how I feel about it, but I don’t actually unleash that feeling fully.

    Everylittlething is gonna be alright.

    Reply
    1. Rbelle

      I agree. But I’m also afraid that if I caught myself on video, my story would have the opposite twist, and I’d discover I’d not only berated my kid, but called her a horrible name or something.

      Reply
  6. Robin

    Try the Sweet and Sour sauce! If it were possible to replace my blood with it so it would course through my veins forever with it’s deliciousness, I totally would.

    Reply
  7. Erica

    My current funk is so significant I’m not sure I can even claim to have arrived here accidentally. This level of crabbiness seems intentionally attained. I guess I’ll go sit in my yellow laundry room until it passes.

    Also, I’ll try to drum up some pre-nostalgia for the kindergarten process, but nobody hold their breath.

    Reply
  8. Lawyerish

    By the way, I am feeling you on the caffeine backfire. The Diet Dr Pepper I got this morning as a little treat to myself (pathetic in and of itself) has only succeeded in making me more anxious and feeling an impending sense of doom.

    Reply
  9. idena

    I am very sorry you are in this funk. I have spent a lot of time in the land of funk lately, and your post puts into words exactly what I would have if I wrote as well as you do.
    Until you wrote about that hot sauce, I had no idea McD’s had hot sauce. This is news to me, yet now I’m mad they don’t have it any longer.

    Reply
  10. Shelly

    I’m just so glad to hear that I’m not alone in my funk! And Tuesdays are my busiest day at work (and I’m reading blogs….predictions of a tough afternoon will all come true). My funk is (hopefully) hormonally based – new baby plus breastfeeding. I’m banking on the fact that it will lift after all that is done, for it is an impressively deep and pervasive funk.

    Reply
  11. Life of a Doctor's Wife

    Fuuuuuuunk. I have hit one, too, which is at the intersection of a) a baby who slept ten hours a night THROUGH the night for two weeks and now has stopped and b) the winter and c) NO CLOTHES that fit properly and d) the weariness of everyday tasks (dishes, dear lord the dishes).

    Reply
  12. Liz

    See, because NOW what I miss is the ability to be sick with NO CHILDREN AROUND, so I can fall into a NyQuil induced funk mid-day with NO CARETAKING RESPONSIBILITIES and just feel shitty and sleepy as GOD INTENDED but instead there are THESE CHILDREN AND THEY NEED THINGS and like, man, I wish I’d known to “cherish” my sick time back in the day, right?

    Reply
  13. Jesabes

    I feel like you are describing me. And it’s not weather related, at least not here. We did get more snow on Sunday (nooooo, it was finally gone) but it’s gone again after two 50ish degree days. You’d think this would be improving my mood but no. I’m still snapping away at the kids all day long and just crabby in general. Also, very martyr-ish when anyone asks me for something. (You want MORE?? Can’t you leave me ALONE??) What a loving, kind mother.

    Reply
  14. rebecca

    This sounds like me during PMS. It also sounds like me on random, overtired days throughout the week when the stress of one thing has been ignored and suppressed until it bursts out as stress over something else. I do the opposite of calming down. I drink more coffee, get more irritable, and finally get so sick of myself that it passes. The process takes place internally but I always like to celebrate with, say, new nail polish or lipstick. Go to T@rget. Feel better.

    Reply
  15. Sarah

    Over and over again this winter I have exactly such days and get convinced that I must have PMS, only to look at the calendar and realize that hormonally speaking I should be at my MONTHLY PEAK of feeling happy and confident. So that’s cheering.

    I really hope whatever’s gotten into me is indeed just seasonal depression. Daylight savings time is actually making it worse, too, because I see all this sunshine and want to get out and go in the mornings, but it’s still twenty degrees or under at that point, and so the sun is just out there TAUNTING me. Also we’re trying really hard to save money for our anniversary trip in May, which is a fun thing to look forward to, but in the meantime it means that those little morale-boosting treats (I’m looking at you, wine and chocolate) have to be carefully considered, and it’s making the tedium of winter feel even more grim.

    I really hope you find the perfect yellow. I love a good yellow room, but a BAD yellow room can be truly depressing. Take your time! (And btw you’re one hundred percent right to aim for one with orange in it rather than green. Just my opinion, but… I’m right. :)

    Reply
  16. Jodie

    I hear you on the funk thing. I am in a knitting funk myself. Also WTH is up with companies that are all: Thank you for your comments–other people like things the wrong way–please visit us again! There should be more an “I’m sorry. Cindy in marketing hates the hot sauce and we all know how she can be. We hope you’ll try one of our other sauces–I hear sweet and sour is good. I’ll add your complaint to the pile and maybe someday that bitch Cindy will get what’s coming to her.”

    Wouldn’t I make a great PR person? no?

    Reply
  17. Alexa

    I can, unfortunately, relate to all of this, as I just last night resolved (vaguely) to Be a Different Sort of Mother, and then ate an entire bag of Spicy Thai Kettle Chips (though I maintain that there really are not that many chips in a bag) and resolved not to be better about my eating as well. And now, this afternoon, I am sitting here feeling glum about the prospect of bath night and wondering whether it is really NECESSARY to bathe the children, and also wondering if maybe I will order takeout for dinner and eat it in front of the television. So. The lesson here is that nothing will ever improve because we will never learn anything except in uselessly-timed flashes of insight we are too weak-willed to make use of later. HAPPY TUESDAY.

    Reply
  18. Maggie

    You are speaking my language. March has been a trial. Work is awful (March is always one of the most busy months at my job, but it feels terrible every year), seasonal allergies are wearing me out, Oldest had some difficult things happen in sports and in school and although he is completely over them and fine, I continue to stew and feel upset, it’s rainy and dark. I am just done with March. Sadly, it will not be done with me for another 13 days. Feh.

    Reply
  19. phancymama

    I am STILL mad at my spouse, who got a free extra couple of days on a work trip to have a real vacation (because I gave those days to him as a GIFT, with a hotel attached) and he got SICK while I was home with two kids with bronchitis. And he was legit sick with sinus infection and ear infection (who gets an ear infection at 34 anyway?). And yet he complained about being able to sleep, because his cough kept him up in a hotel room all by himself. And my kids had coughs that kept me up and I still had the dog and cats and dishes and cleaning for his mother, and feeding and dressing the children too.
    ANd I live in warm weather.
    Grump.

    Reply
  20. Rbelle

    Wait, WHAT? Hot mustard is the reason McNuggets exist, period. I, too, will have pretty much no reason to go to McDonalds, especially since Wendy’s has a much better value menu. Ugh. Now I’m annoyed.

    Reply
  21. erin d

    Retold your woes to my husband, relating them to our own recent funk. Without cracking a smile or missing a beat he said “well clearly she needs to paint the bathroom Hot Mustard yellow.”

    Reply

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