An Off Day

We all have off days don’t we?

You know those days where you would like to have a remote controller that could mute and maybe even pause the children and their noise for just a few minutes so that you could sink into your chair, drink a nice cup of hot tea and close your eyes breathing in the joy that your tea won’t be tipped all over you, the children aren’t killing each other, shouting, screaming or slamming doors.

Just imagine a night where you go to bed when you want to, sleep all night without interruption and wake up of your own accord without some small person screaming for you like a thing possessed or pressed up against you so hard that you only have about an inch of bed.

The thought of driving in the car without the arguments about who gets to sit in the front and which song is going to pulsate loudly through your brain.  Being able to have a conversation.  A proper actual real conversation with one person at a time without having to decipher three high speed conversations at once.

A meal where no-one moans about what’s on their plate and you can eat your food, hot and without small fingers poking it or trying to steal it.

A day where it just doesn’t matter that you don’t feel like facing the world, that you feel sad without reason and stupid little things make you cry.  When you just don’t have the energy to deal with the squabbles and the disputes over silly things.  Days where you really don’t care about the who said what to who at school.  Days when you know that the children have spent too long looking at electronic screens because you don’t have to energy for the battle to get them off.

An evening when all the children finally settle for the night and you sit and take in the silence with a huge sigh of relief knowing that even if you don’t do anything, you have a few minutes to yourself to just gather your thoughts and enjoy the peace.

These ‘off days’ make me feel so guilty, I love my children so much and I love having them around me and the noise and the squabbling is all part of parenting.  I am so lucky to have them and I never forget that but every now and then I feel so tired and fed up, I would probably press the pause button if I could, just for a few minutes.