Pain

The weather is wreaking havoc on my sinuses, and I'm spending my days with varied degrees of headaches--from "annoying" to "teeth-hurting" to "drugs-won't-touch-it." Needless to say, it's not helping my moods much. The poor children. The poor, poor children. They just must think I'm a monster with all the mood swings and the yelling and the "OMG, PLEASE STOP WHISPERING--MY HEAD, MY HEAD!" followed by Apologetic and Ice-Cream-Giving Mommy. ugh.

Today took the cake as I was distracted and making some phone calls, then applying for jobs and then helping my poor panicked mother with her English paper at the same time that Izzy and her her little friend were here playing.... They asked if they could water my plant. Well...sure! After I finally got off the phone (I wonder if my mother got anything out of that conversation since I was trying to construct a job-specified cover letter at the same time?), Izzy runs upstairs with a PIECE of my plant. "We were ripping off the leaves and R broke your plant!" Um...WHAT? Down to the den I go, to find that those giggly little girls had REALLY watered my plant--it was monsooned in water and soil which had spread out all over the fireplace and the floor. The plant was completely BALD with just half of the stalk sticking out of the pot.

Now, really, I'm pretty terrible with plants. Especially since I've had kids (and--oh, when we had cats!), I can't keep them alive for anything. But THIS plant--this particular plant!--was the only surviving plant leftover from the ONE TIME my husband ever sent any kind of greenery to me at work--and it was from ten years ago. Yes, it survived the cats. It survived the kids. It even survived ME (mainly due to the fact that it stayed at my desk for most of those ten years). So...the brutal KILLING of a plant that was a rare plant-like gift from my husband (He sent it to me for Father's Day. That's right, Father's Day! And the note said, "Thank you for letting me be the father of your baby." AWWWWWW--am I right?) did NOT go over well.

I laid into those girls. And I made them clean up the mess (as well as five-years can clean...will be going back over that later, *sigh*). And I put them in time out. I admitted it was partly my fault--these girls have gotten into some messy mischief before when I was distracted, and I should have known better than to let them water a plant unsupervised--but I also realize that even five-year olds KNOW BETTER than to water a plant THAT much and to pluck ALL the leaves off of a plant!

I guess the worst part was having to admit to the little girl's dad that I yelled at his kid when he picked her up. You better bet I told him because who KNOWS what tales this kid might bring home without my knowledge or chance to admit/defend my actions! But...there's reality. It's bad enough being a yeller with your own kids, but it's even worse when you do it to kids that do not belong to you. Bad Parent to the Nth degree. And now it's Public Knowledge.

Crud.

And no, the drugs have STILL not touched my headache today.