sunday, for a brief moment (actually seven hours) i only had one child, and that one prefers to stay upstairs and out of sight.  exhaustion threw me into bed for a 2 hour nap. i awoke still tired.  as if i can't get enough of storms rumbling non-stop, after the nap i found a national geographic movie about tornado chasers.  what is the fascination with chasing trouble?  as if i know nothing about that....  
i have a poem that starts:
    a common misconception
is the assumption
that god created flowers
on a higher plane than dirt
or say
tornadoes
my mother never rode on horses
she ran with mustangs
another time
a tornado touched down
saw her
and retreated back from
where it came....

and the poem goes on, you get the drift

yesterday was mother's day and as some of you probably noticed i was pretty 'not into' the day
my own mother chose alcohol over her children - or the alcohol chose her
the gifts she sent yearly let me know that even in her haze she loved me as best she could
unfortunately for a child those gifts were not enough
we are always told, we do the best we can
and i argue with that, knowing in the depths of my being that there were plenty of days when i was mothering my own children that i certainly did not do the best i could - often i was too tired, too wore out, too poor to do the best i could - i hoped that the days i could pull it off 'doing the best i could' would somehow make up for all the days i just couldn't, didn't or wouldn't - and while i don't feel guilty about the mothering i did do; the evidence is in the pudding so to speak
and there are friends, bless their hearts and minds, who know exactly when to say the thing that makes the biggest difference...   my friend sue, looking me square in the eye and saying, 'just look at it this way, the insanity skipped a generation, it does that in many families'

i just do not get platitudes and empty words; love is a verb in my vocabulary

grannie tip for the night:
     a ten pound bag of potatoes in front of the lower kitchen cabinet keeps the toddlers out of the dish soap, ramen noodles, garbage bags, fire extinguisher and water pitchers stored under the sink