An antidote to a grumpy evening

So, I'm getting REALLY tired of getting home at 8 p.m. during the week because some idiot gets in a car accident and ties up I-5, and then Rachel wants to play and tickle and cuddle instead of eat dinner, and all I want is for someone to haul all my crap from the car, unbuckle Rachel from her carseat and serve me a nice, hot meal -- all the stuff that I do every single night of my life nowdays -- and clean up the disastrous backseat and mop the floor and clean the grime from the windows and the doors or hire me a maid to do all that. Oh, and read books to Rachel, the same ones every night, with an appropriate amount of enthusiasm in my voice.

And I want someone to take charge of my to-do list, which includes fixing the plaster in the living room and replacing the ceiling vent in my bathroom which I can't even figure out how to open because there are no screws, at least that I can see, and tell me how I'm going to afford to repair everything that's starting to go wrong in this house AND buy me a badly-needed new car.

All of this was weaving itself through my subconscious tonight, especially when Rachel was being more whiny and sobby than usual. And I wasted an hour sitting at the dinner table reading the NYTimes and Oregonian because By God I was going to read a newspaper today if it killed me, and I just finished cleaning up the kitchen when I heard what sounded like yelling from Rachel's bedroom. I listened at the door and it really sounded as if she was fighting off a monster. Or at least a bad dream.

I tiptoed inside, rubbed her back, whispered, "It's OK, sweetie," and pulled her blanket over her (she kicked it off in her sleep, I'm sure). Her entire little body seemed to relax. And then emotions that swept over me were overwhelming. She really depends on her Mommy -- stressed-out, frazzled Mommy -- to hold it together and make everything better when she has a bad dream or needs comforting. The power I have is absolutely incredible. I've never pulled the blanket back over her body during a bad dream, and suddenly I realized she really counts on me to fix whatever's wrong in her life.

Kind of like I want to depend on someone to fix what's wrong in my life, but I can't. It's up to me.

I'm tearing up as I write this. It's time for me to turn in.