Let me explain...

 Sometimes, I feel like I'm walking a fine line between spending too much time with my kids and not spending enough time with me kids.  It's not a great place to be.  I am forever being pulled in two directions, like a game of tug-of-war. When you can afford to give your kids a lot of time and energy, it's hard to decide when enough is enough. I never know when I've given them the right amount so that I can feel like guilty about taking a bit of time for myself.

Guilt: the word of the day.  A huge part of my life is feeling guilty. I feel guilty about spending too much time with my kids. I feel guilty for spending too little time with my kids. I feel guilty for not spending enough time with my husband. I feel guilty for leaving dirty dishes in the sink. I feel guilty for making my kids baloney sandwiches. I feel guilty for letting my kids have too much screen time. I feel guilty, guilty, GUILTY! The story of my life. My husband and I play this "game" called "The Victim Olympics".  He says it's a joke, and most of the time I realize it IS a joke, but sometimes I feel like it is an actual game we're playing. Who is the biggest victim?  Who wins the biggest victim award?  Who gets out of the humdrum parts of everyday life (ex. dishes, laundry, making lunches) because THEY ARE the biggest victim at the moment? I lose. Every. Single. Time. Not necessarily because I am NOT the biggest victim, but mostly because I think the damn game is real. While my hubby thinks he is genuinely joking around with me, I see him as the winner of The Victim Olympics. He gets gold medals all the time, in my head.  He works the longest hours. He sleeps the least. His job is more stressful. Etc. 

Winning at The Victim Olympics would be nice, if it meant someone else would do the laundry from time to time.

I digress.  I haven't written in a long time and I've been itching to put my fingers on a keyboard for a while now.  However, my constant losing of The Victim Olympics means I get very little, if any, time to myself, to do things I want to do, such as write.  At this moment, I am delaying the all important "Bed Time" so that I can spend a few minutes writing this.  

Also, my daughter just came and puppy-faced me with "Can we do my craft now?", since she can't do it without my reading of the instructions to her first, and she pulled it all out while I was making school lunches and tidying supper, and at that time I said, "In a little bit..." She got distracted with brothers and electronics, and I had hoped the craft was forgotten. It was not.  And so, my writing time is finished for tonight. I will try again another day.