It’s a Saturday night and I’m alone, kids asleep, eating chocolate, drinking copious glasses of wine, and listening to New Wave on my LaunchCast. Sounds like heaven? Yes and no…

I wish I could say I’m super copacetic and everything’s perfect. But it’s not. I don’t even know where to begin. I hate to be so negative. Especially after not having written in so long. But I’m sinking. Fast.

Let me give a preface to tonight, and why I’m partaking in so much vino… my Mom came up on Thursday night to help get ready for a visit from my Aunt and my Aunt’s best friends (Bea and Pearl). Those names sound OLD, but believe me- these chicks are super hip and so fun to be with! They are all hairstylists and totally on the up & up. So I was super excited that they were coming to visit! My Aunt has been best friends with these girls forEVER and I grew up knowing them. Basically, they’ve know me since I was a little girl, watched me grow into the woman I am today (whatever the hell that means). I haven’t seen them in ages and they wanted to come to my town to see our new house and meet my children. Plus, there is a major casino in my town and they all planned to stay the night there tonight and party. So my Mom came up a few days early to help me get ready (God bless my Mother). Boy, did we bust our asses cleaning, and cooking, and watching kiddos! My Mom said, “I don’t know how you do it! I’m exhausted and there’s two of us!”. NO FREAKIN’ SHIT. Raising a 21-month old and a 5-month-old, plus working a corporate job is a crazy-insane-lose-your-mind kind of stress. But also so fun and rewarding! It’s SO two-sided. Bad and good! Crazy and fun! Ugly and beautiful!

So I decided to play hookie and call in sick to work on Friday. TDWSH was in New Mexico and emailed me that she was going to take a vacation day on Friday, instead of working from the NM site, so I said FUCK THIS NOISE, and decided I was too ill to come in. I put my OOO notice on the ol’ laptop and looked forward to a day of pretending like I didn’t work for Corporate America. The being sick part wasn’t a total lie though, because I’ve been suffering with a kidney infection for the past week (on meds) and also had a periodontal cleaning the evening before (OUCHIE MAMA!). So Mom and I had planned to spend the day grocery shopping and cleaning, but ended up spending most of it at the vet with a sick cat (hello blood in the urine!) and rushing around like goons to get things done. In the afternoon, my Mom watched the boys for me while I FINALLY got to get my haircut & colored after like 8 weeks of the scariest roots eVER. I got myself a semi-emo haircut from a totally self-assured super young hairstylist whom I will probably go to again just because she makes me feel like I’m not that far away from coolness, just by sharing 60 minutes of gossip while she does my hair. The kind of girl with a pretty face, tiny butt, and raspy voice that makes you wish you were 22 and child-less again.

This morning my Mom and I spent the day cleaning, cooking, and trying to keep Q from undoing all our hardwork (read: fruitless efforts!). This afternoon, about 2pm they showed up and my Q went absolutely apeshit to have so many pretty girls giving him attention. I have NEVER seen my son behave like he did tonight! He was a sweaty hysterical, 21-month-old MESS of spasticness and slobber! He was like a hyper-super-spastic puppy dog! I swear to God, I thought he would have a heart attack! He was SO riled up and so excited to have so much attention! He was on full throttle all night.

The ladies and I drank a bunch of wine and beer, ate a really yummy homemade pasta dinner, and sat & talked for a few hours. Bet alas, it was time for them to leave me and head off for their planned night of FUN at the casino. Yeah, I couldn’t go Husband had to work and refused to take time off just so Mom could go play with the big girls. BTW, during this whole thing, Hubby was TRYING to sleep (poor guy), all amongst screaming kids and super buzzed, highly talkative chicas in the house. He left for work about 5pm and the girls left about 6pm. Since then, I’ve managed to drink another bottle of wine all by myself. It was such a crappy, unusual feeling to be the one left behind! The one strapped down with kids and responsibility. It was so unlike me. They remember the old crazy me. Hell, I remember the old me! And I think they even felt weird. They tried to downplay how much fun they were going to have because I think they felt bad for me. But hey, I got by when they left because HELLO! Wine! Kids are asleep! Feeling G-O-O-D! BUT… (there’s always a but)…

I feel so totally lonely! I really do. I feel like a lame ass saying that. But I do. I can’t help it. I have no friends. Online or otherwise. The few people that have tried to make friends with me, I’ve turned them down for outings because I’m just too crazy-busy being a cubicle monkey and mommy (in case you don’t know, husband works nights and I’m basically a single mom most of the week).

I even did a totally sad little internet search to try to find old “friends”. I almost contemplated contacting a few people from my past. But thought better! I hate to be the one to break the distance. I know so much has passed and changed. I know lives are so different now, but I would still LOVE to hear from those people. But it seems like I’m always the one reaching out. And I just feel like I can’t put myself out there right now. I have enough stress with finances, work, kids, husband, house, etc.

Hubby has been presented with an opportunity to go to day shift. But it would mean a 20% cut in pay. That’s astronomical to us! Like $1000.00 a month! We could not afford it. I would have to go back to full-time (I might have forgotten to mention that TDWSH let me come back from maternity leave on part-time status of 30 hours a week and Lord knows it has been so much better!). But even if I went back to FT, it wouldn’t be enough. Not only would we suffer financially, the kids would go from being in daycare 3 days a week to 5 days a week. It would hurt financially, but also on a personal level. We would have even less interaction with the boys. As it is, I personally only see them for a few hours a night on the weeknights. Hubby sees them even less. Basically, we decided it was really not a good option for us. So many cons and really only one pro.

So right now, I’m stuck here. Stuck being an almost single mom, who lives too far away from work, with too high of a mortgage to pay for, and has two young boys to care for and not enough time or energy to do it all. Stuck here with foreclosures all around us. With weight that is creeping up out of control. With health problems and sleep deprivation. I feel trapped. I feel sad. I feel lonely. I feel mentally and physically exhausted. I feel like I have lost all of my identity and that there are only distant memories of the girl I used to be. But most of all.. right now, I feel DRUNK. So off to bed I go, into dreamland (where I dream about the pre-kid cool days when I was hot and skinny and had a life)…