I Need My Space

If it were not for Facebook, I think I’d be so out of touch with humanity as to be the crazy unshaven hermit one hears about in folktales. Jonathan promised a rage if I so much as attempted to leave and go to the grocery store yesterday. A ridiculous attempt at control because he wanted me to go way more than I wanted to brave Publix and all the people buying their cook-out supplies since the Fourth of July is a holiday for normal citizens.

I cooked pinto beans, fortunately I keep a fairly full pantry around here, and with fresh salsa last night from the garden, I nearly swooned with stomach happiness. Cristy made another salsa with tomatillos. Restaurants aren’t this good, nor this healthy, and I stuffed myself silly, feeling the white-hot heat in my belly from jalapenos all evening, evoking a sense of satisfaction in spite of two alarmingly vicious fistfights at the pool between Jonathan and Paloma.

Javy and Chuy, birth sibs, separated them for the thousandth time. If a non-birth sib became involved, there’d be hell to pay, this we know. Not so with Allen and JoJo. Whoever is close by, can step in without repercussions as they aren’t emotionally disturbed children, just emotionally complicated and difficult – no just supremely emotional.

Why are some kids wearing tshirts in the pool? Various dumb reasons such as Mayra'd been thrown in fully dressed, Tony's being oppositional, and Allen is allowed to do so since he's recovering from his burns...remarkably so.

Tony and Martin also scrappled several times with each other, Scotty was prowling around looking for a willing combatant, but I sat his butt in time-out to think about it, eventually cooling off without further ado. Sweet Nando, running around the house all summer in his plaid boxer shorts, just wants to ride bikes and have fun…my kind of guy.

JoJo was AWFUL at suppertime. I was fairly sure he’d pick a fight, so that in his mixed up thinking, he’d then have an excuse to rage. I snarled at him a few times and he eventually apologized and then couldn’t understand why I didn’t want him clinging to me.

It’s called Give Me A Break, son. I need to breathe.

I was sitting on the edge of the baby end at the pool with Carolina, watching Estrella take tentative steps to freedom, a two year old with a life jacket, learning to maneuver in water, yet with my apparently magnetic personality, there was soon a crowd of my children in the baby end, when we have a mongo-sized deep end. But this is demonstrative of how I live.

I’ll slip into the living room for a minute only to find 12 kids within two feet of me. I’ll run outside to breathe in the wide open spaces only to immediately discover another dozen young’uns in my face. No matter where I go, nor what I do, there they are…or else my cell phone is ringing and it’s yet another one of them.

I suppose I’d be lonely otherwise. Yeah, right. I’m easily content when alone and busy whether it involves reading a book, tending to the million chores, or working outside, I’m fine with solitude.

Actually I crave it.

But, oh well, this is what I have instead.

Emotionally demanding, physically clinging, spiritually needy, traumatized children 24-7.

See Sarah, no verb above, as I’m rebelliously swerving from grammar rules my ownself here, the only area in which I can control in my own house. Do I need a life or what?

It doesn’t matter what I need (she said self-pityingly), I have to throw in a load of clothes into the washing machine, run outside and water another garden area as we’ve not seen rain in quite some time, clean up around the pool, argue again with Verizon, work on our budget and bills, call the kid who’s been avoiding me as she hoping against hope that I’d be unaware of her latest brush with the law, water the houseplants and take out the trash.

Thank you Lord that school resumes on August 5th.

I need my space.

But first, I'll stuff myself with Grandma's Zucchini Bread. Sounds odd maybe, but I'm already on my fifth very large piece.