Guilt

When the alarm went off at 5:50 this a.m. Dave reached over and whacked me out of oblivion. I rolled out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom, where I fell asleep on the pot. I woke up when I felt my legs go numb, and decided to go back to bed. Dave always gets irritated if the alarm goes off, and I don't actually go to my work-out group, so when he growled at me as I got comfy again, I told him that my hip was acting up and that I just didn't feel good. The lies sounded empty to me too, but the truth was, I've been having this weird recurring dream about Bobby Brown. I know it's random, and he is gross and totally 80's. I know. In the dream he is about a foot and a half shorter than me, and still carries feelings for Whitney, but, can I just say......... damn! The boy got skillz.

In my defense, Dave and I are not together in the dream, and everybody knows that Bobby and Whitney were terrible together. However, that does not quell the tiny amount of guilt that burns in the bottom of my stomach, this morning, as I toss together some cinnamon toast for the Hoodlums breakfast. It's only 7:30 and I have already cheated on Dave, and skipped my excersise. Yikes.

The toast only adds to my morning guilt, as Dyl begs me to puh-lease buy him some regular milk today. We are a variety milk family. The kids refuse to drink anything less than 2%, and Dave cannot even conceive of budging up or down from his 1%, and let's just face it, my Mexican calorie budget leaves no room for anything but skim, so I end up buying 3 different gallons. Dyl reminds me that we have been out of milk for days, except we have plenty of skim, and he is just super glad that I have milk for breakfast. Little smart alec.

It's shopping day with Gram, and I tell her we should be down around nine or a little after. We bust out of our house at 9:10 and still have a half hour commute. The tiny amount of guilt grows in my gut, as I anticipate the painful shopping trip ahead of us. Last week, Gram got a hold of 4 extra Wal-Green ads and made me pick up her coupons in quadrip-licate. It was quite a scene with her pushing a cart and her walker, Dyl pushing a cart, and myself pushing a cart, pulling a cart, and frequently abandoning my carts, in a mad dash to stop Dyl from running Gram over with his. When I asked Gram what she wanted me to do with the fourth set of coupons, since it's only one per customer, she got super irritated with me, and said, "We're shopping for ....your.......SIS-ter." *wink*wink*. Obviously.......... What was I thinking.

When we get to Gram's, she doesn't even yell at me for not being on time, so my guilt grows a little more. It just gets bigger as she goes into the back room, and I frantically go through the stack of coupons to weed out the expired, the cat food(no cat), and the pictures of things that aren't actually coupons. I managed to get the pile down to around 40ish legitimate coupons by the time she came back out, and we were on our way.

Gram has been very concerned about my family having a good Thanksgiving, since I will be working, and Dave decided to just stay home with the kids and the t.v. this year. She doesn't quite get, that I always request to work Thanksgiving, and Dave will not feel neglected if he gets to just watch some football. In order to ease her conscious, she bought us a pumpkin pie and gave me instructions on how to make whipping cream from scratch. I am one step ahead of her though, and always keep an aerosolized version at the ready, which doesn't add to my guilt in the least.

With Dyl at school, and Emma down for a nap, the afternoon stretched in front of me, glorious, with what seemed like endless possibilities. Since I didn't actually work out this morning I didn't feel that I deserved a nap, so I made myself useful and cleaned several hours of reality smut and Lifetime movies off our DVR. I guess having a nap, and lying motionless on your bed for a couple of hours, with only the twitch of your fingers on the remote, might be pretty close to the same thing. I didn't feel all that guilty until I could hear the Hoodlums coming home from school and I had to wade through the waist deep, clean laundry pile, on the floor of my bedroom, to get to them. Whatever, pile it on.

The Boys were all a burst with information from their day. They were talking all over the place and on top of each other, and I could hardly comprehend what they were saying. Dyl was in a tizzy trying to explain to me, " then they turned all the lights out, and we had to crawl on the floor, and their was a red flag...that means someone is trying to get the kids and kill them, and then we hid under the desks and had to be really quiet and hold our breath, until we couldn't see the red flag anymore, and"

Dawson was equally as frantic, "there were two cars that tried to get me 'n Dyl in them on the way home and we just said no, even though its frickin' cold outside and oh, sorry, I forgot not to say frickin', but I remembered about stranger danger, and then we had to watch for the red flag and then we had our lights out, but I didn't wear my coat out to recess and do we have anymore cinnamon rolls?"

Eventually, I worked out that they had a new drill at school called "lock down" and while the Boys seemed to take it in stride, I was a little T.O.'d, that they have to worry about stuff like that. They were also offered two rides home, both from neighbors, and although it was "frickin' cold", they chose to walk, rather than risk abduction. Freak, if I had been through the lock down drill, I wouldn't ride with anyone either. Plus, we live less than a block from the bus stop, hardly the jaunt home from school I used to make. You know uphill both ways, snow, the works.

Obviously with my busy afternoon, I really didn't get much planned for dinner. Dylan had earned a pizza certificate for reading at school, which gave me an easy out. My guilt really just kind of snowballed from there on out. The house is a sty, Dawson had gone swimming with a friend and wasn't home until late, so no Family Home Evening, not that I had anything planned anyway.

Truth be told, these things would not weigh on my conscience for even a second, if it was clean to begin with. And to be frank, I never thought that my current drama would bother me, but my pride has come full circle. My humiliation, public. Recently, I had the opportunity to play in a church volleyball league, and out of respect for my husband, who deemed our team, Satan's Sweethearts, I won't go into all the gory details, but I will say that I was a little shit, and my sportsmanship was anything but Christian.

Long story short, we played for the Region Championship last week and I sucked it up something fierce. I couldn't make a play to save my life, and I am sure dropping a half F-Bomb, "fffuuuuuuzzzz" every crappy pass I made, didn't help. We took second place, which only stung half as bad as my personal shame.

That might be a tad dramatic. I don't really have a lot of remorse for my actions, but it sure did suck, to suck. Thankfully, I have Dave as my moral conscience, and on the way over he texted me a picture of a For Sale sign, with "my soul" listed in the phone number area. I know I have a problem with my desire to win at all costs, and it becomes more apparent at different times in my life. I have had to learn to let the Hoodlums win at Candy Land every so often, and more recently, I found myself siding with the sweet little soccer player from New Mexico that delivered an awesome smack down on the BYU coed.

Regardless, I felt some guilt today, and that is healthy and good, as long as it doesn't consume me. Tomorrow is another day, and since I am a mother, my guilt will probably never go away. That is fine as long as I can still find solace in nachos, and sometimes have the opportunity to bake a funeral casserole; or contribute to some worthwhile charity, in an effort to even out the scales.