I ran away from my own office today

I ran away from my office today, boy did I need to. A mom and daughter came in at 10:30 (wrong day, they were supposed to be here Tuesday). Daughter is a newly minted professional person (she went back to professional school later in life) and while she was freshly divorced, in school and not making ends meet, she intercepted credit card offers in her mom's mail and opened accounts without permission, bad bad bad scene. Especially since, well, that’s criminal behavior and that kind of behavior could get daughter’s newly minted professional license yanked in a hot second should her mom choose to press it. And things between them started to get so tense, they have not reached a point where they can talk about what happened without tears and recrimination, there is so much anger and guilt spilling out all over my desk, respectively: daughter guilt, mom anger, so I faked a hearing at 11:00 (since they were here on the wrong day anyway) and fled.
I fled my own office to get away from angry sad people who love each other but are wrecked and ruined over what has happened between them. But the help I could offer, the mom didn't want to take, and I am not a counselor/listener/it's going to be all right personality, so I fled. I flew away from them, I cannot fix it for them, I think the mom thought I could wave a wand, and maybe attorney Samantha Stevens could wave that wand or crinkle her nose, me, not so much.

So on my mental health break fleeing from the scene of sadness, I picked up some kid costume things at a here just for the month gone November 1 Halloween store, some new casual black shoes because I was in Fred Meyer (I know, now Smith's, but it took me so long to get used to calling it Fred Meyer). But the Fred Meyer has shoes and it is close to my office and I will never make it to the mall, I only just kid myself that it will ever happen so, there it is, I'm into convenience not fashion don't you know and you that know me IRL as the kids say, know. I filled my tank and ran the van through the car wash because I must have driven through a couple of swarms of bugs between here and Kaysville the past few trips to visit the old folks. I'm loving the new Legacy Parkway even though I don’t drive on it, but others are and that leaves I-15 all open and maneuverable, just like I like it. So I feel SO MUCH better now and even better after I do a little blogging during work hours, ooh, look at me, I’m wasting time, ooh.
I even called my mom while I was running those errands and said, hey, although you think I'm spinning out of control a lot, it could be worse, I could be running up debt on your accounts without your knowledge or consent, so think about that, see, not such a disappointment although my freezer is packed to the gills with sacks and sacks and sack of Bertolli meals. But show me a working mom out there who doesn’t need a few, or many, meal time crutches crammed away in the freezer, huh? Am I right?

It's just that I have been so busy at work, which is a good thing. Mo' money to hack away at the Nora adoption debt mountain caused by the lack of (a) cash flow, caused by my lack of (b) foresight. For a few months before and well over a year after bringing Nora home, I was not creating a big old pile of steaming debt that is not related to Nora specifically, but caused by the Bankruptcy Reform Act for which I didn't adequately or even at all predict the whammy it was going to put on my income at just the same time I was bringing home No. 4 mouth to feed. But with the economy in a tail spin, I haven't slowed down for a few weeks and mom is coming in again to watch the kids after school so I can work late to try to catch up on things. I'm having bad interrupted sleep and really strange stress dreams that I remember because I'm waking up so much which is a sure sign that I’m under a lot of pressure, that and the bad impatient parenting, that’s a pretty sure sign too.

And maybe it's here, while I’m really feeling the strain of being the sole provider, that I'll air my pet peeve (chuckle, like I have just the one). When a member of a two parent household says to me, "I don't know how you do it, when Jack or Jill Sprat is out of town for business, and it's just me and the kids; it just makes me spaz out." Well Mrs. and/or Mr. Sprat, try that scenario without the absent Sprat's paycheck hitting the automatic deposit into your checking account on a bi-weekly basis and THEN we can talk, you know? But I don't say anything; I graciously accept the compliment, keep my lips zipped and smile. Hey, what can I say anyway? I asked for this, I sure did, so don't let me hear myself complaining now that I got what I asked for, but, seriously, sometimes I don't know how I do it.