Pissed off or pissed on? Doesn’t matter. Both suck.

This has been a week, y’all. A long, busy, tiring week.

Three nights of basketball, one night of gifted class, and one night spent frustrated because Joshua decided to “decorate” the couch cushions with an ink pen while I was making Christmas presents.

Add in a healthy dose of anxiety over his picky eating and whether or not I’m a complete screw-up [yes, again] and his being switched to another class at daycare and you’ve got a recipe for Meatloaf Meltdown. Which is exactly what I had today. Minus the meatloaf.

This morning I needed rest. But Joshua woke up at 6:00, ready to start the day. And Dan had to go to work.

When it was clear that Joshua was not interested in having a calm morning and insisted upon turning the Christmas tree lights on and off, throwing his crayons all over the living room, and slinging his animal alphabet flashcards from one end of the rug to the other, and when it became clear that my only choice would be to take him with me to the craft store, we loaded up and left the house.

What a mistake.

A mistake I’ve made before.

He refused to ride in the cart at the store. But he also refused to walk.

He wanted to be carried. Because lately he always wants to be carried. By me, of course. The woman who is currently carrying another human and whose vagina bone feels like it’s being ripped into two pieces on a near constant basis. The woman who cannot really handle carrying an additional 35 points of wiggling toddler simply because he doesn’t want to walk or ride.

Yes. Me. Only me.

I tried to resist. But when you have to get things done so you can leave, how do you have that fight? How do you have a battle of wills with a 2 year old in the middle of Hobby Lobby over holding hands and walking or riding in the cart?

At one point I plopped him in the seat of the cart and let him protest. I bribed him with “games” on the phone and that worked for about 5 minutes. I grew increasingly frustrated and angry with his protests. My voice got erratic. My skin started crawling. It was a million zillion degrees in that store in the middle of December.

By the time we got to the register, he’d managed to climb out of the seat which meant I had to grab him before he kamikaze’d to the floor. And at the register, I couldn’t exactly put him down because of all the things he could get into right there.

So I held him.

And he asked for this and that and “I need get down.”

And then I felt it. I felt the warmth and the wetness on my hip. The telling feeling of having just been peed on. A feeling I think most moms know all too well.

The diaper that had been fresh when we walked out the door an hour earlier had been completely soaked through thanks to the water he had in the car.

I huffed and the cashier apologized for the wait. So in my absolute classiest voice I said “Oh, no big deal. I just got peed on.”

Finally, it was my turn. I had to unload my cart one handed while I held Joshua on my left hip. No one even bothered to help. Which kind of made me want to cry. I feel like it was clear I was struggling at that point. And there I was, taking care of things on my own.

I paid and took Joshua to the car and changed his diaper in the back. I wasn’t nice about it, which makes me feel like shit on a stick. It wasn’t his fault the diaper leaked.

As I picked him up and didn’t put his pants back on he started protesting. I put him in the car seat and he started wailing. I wasn’t nice about that either.

Almost the entire drive home alternated between him screaming and crying because he wasn’t wearing pants and shoes to me screaming at him to stop crying which led to me crying so hard at one point my sunglasses fogged up.

And then I just felt terrible and started apologizing to him for having me as his mother.

I don’t want him to grow up afraid of me and my irrationality. He deserves so much better than a mother who can’t keep it together. So much better.

I need a clear head and a clear heart.