Talking to the walls

Single parents, or parents who are mostly single, rock.  It's not like this just dawned on me or anything, it's just that I don't have a lot of variety in my circle of immediate friends, and I don't see single parents doing "it all" every day.  So, I forget to think about just how hard they're working all the time.

With M gone for the week, I have been given just an amuse bouche of what life as a single parent must be.  And my bouche is not amused.

They're just relentless.  Not necessarily, bad, but relentless.  Kids NEVER stop.  Even when you desperately need them to, just for a minute, give it UP.  For one moment today, could you please please please do what is easiest for me without argument, sass, discussion or whining (and that's just from me)?
Could you just make my life easier by doing this one thing now?

It's not all the kids' fault, by any means.  My kids have been pretty good.  They can't help that they're age-appropriately programmed to watch TV and play and not want to do work.  They are doing what we want kids to do--except when we want them to unload the dishwasher, pick up the cereal pieces, take out the dog.

Sometimes, and I was thinking about this last night as S was snoring beside me in my bed.  (He's taken M's absence as some sort of Hamlet-ian opportunity to usurp the bed.)  There's just nobody to talk to.  Holy crap.  Yesterday, I visited with a friend for a couple of hours, and afterwards was kind of blissed out, and I thought, OH YEAH.  It's because I haven't talked to a grown up in FOUR DAYS.  What the hell?   How can anyone go that long without speaking Grownup?

 Discussing Phineas and Ferb as though it is the great literature of our time?  An informative lecture on Ninjago?  A thorough analysis of the most recent Lego creation?   A very detailed examination on how solar panels work?  Why boys think their junk is so fun?

All of this, ALL of this, I have done.  I haven't spoken about anything above, say the 5th grade level, in days.  Not that M and I are having deep discussions about art and science and literature when he's home.  But we ARE talking about grown up life.  About things that are curious and interesting and (relatively) important.  I can't even have a sophisticated argument without him around.  It all deteriorates into "neenerneener!  Are too!  AM not!" and "Because I SAID SO."

Nothing.  No engagement whatsoever.  It's me and these little twerps, sweet as they may be.

So, last night, S is snoring and the dog is snoring, and I'm hot.  I feel bitter, momentarily, about M dressed ever so hip, and cruising through one of the world's great cities, and I feel like picking a fight.

Nobody to fight with.

So, I lay there in the heat.  Mad.  Hot.  Throwing the covers off my body and stewing in my nightshirt about how I'm in Alabama and he's in London and the kids are just kids.

The air conditioner kicked on at some point.

"Yeah.  That's what I thought," I whisper yell at the ductwork.  "I knew it was hot in here.  Where the hell where YOU, A/C? Did you think that I wasn't going to NOTICE it was 76 degrees in here?  Where youjust going to see if you could take a few degrees off?  Really?  I didn't think so."

If you're gonna fight with some one, you better make sure you can win.