Where was I going

Sometimes I wonder if there is more to life than this.   I spend my days with three children under 5, then work four nights a week.  Free time is pretty much nil.  Whatever hobbies I used to have has flown out of the proverbial window.  I can't even seem to squeeze in exercise time, something which is a must because of my high blood pressure.  Gee, the only time I can do it... is if I GET UP EARLIER.  Can I just say... so bite me? 

We own two video stores so the free evenings I do have means I HAVE to watch movies.  I'm sorry but apart from the fact that my movies are free.. it really has soured the whole joy of staying home and popping a video in.  I'm the type of person that can multitask while I watch a film only if I have seen it before. Otherwise, I miss too much stuff and I like to catch all the dialogue.  I'm a reader so I LIKE dialogue.  We even put subtitles on just so we can catch every word. 

Someone asked me... what do  I do for myself?  What?  Do something for me?  Get out!   Okay, occasionally and I do mean occasionally I do get out to do something girly like go to the spa but those trips are few and far between and mainly only on the insistence of a girl friend who treated me for my birthday.  Otherwise, I have no time.  Any time I could free up would require babysitting.  I don't know about you but I hate asking my parents or inlaws to babysit very often.  My mother never sounds very enthusiastic.  She loves my kids, I just think she likes them more on a visiting basis.  Occasionally she comes and takes E for an afternoon but she still works so she doesn't have a lot of time for it.  Add that to she hates to drive at night etc..  My mom-in-law is willing most of the time but she's older so 3 kids poop her out.  They're always doing little sits for us, like watching the kids in the a.m. so I can take E to school and coming down after they are in bed once in a while so K and I can go out.  But that's it and we don't have a regular teenage babysitter.  We have no clue how to go about finding a sitter we can trust.  Let's face it, stranger babysitters are a whole new complication.  My 14 year old nephew babysat once but he didn't even change O's diaper in 5 hours.  Course he's never had to do it before. 

So life seems very drudge-like at the moment.  The only small pleasures I get in is when I'm reading, usually while the kids are sleeping.  Most days my kids are fun but there are lots and lots of days they're just so much work.  Like what we like to call the "summer of sick" cause they were all so sick for almost the entire summer.  It's hard to keep them entertained in weather like this so often then end up running screaming through the house chasing each other.  They've got to burn off the energy somehow but boy oh boy it's loud.  I seriously need to invest in ear plugs. 

Do you ever find that you get to where you just don't care anymore, you just don't have it in you to settle out one more dispute, force one more kid to share, sort out what happened? More and more I find myself at that point and let's face it, it's not pretty. 

I guess I'm not so much whiny as just stating a few life realities at the moment.  I've come across a few blogs and some friends of friends who are amazingly enthusiastic about their mom job and love every little dirty, screaming, nit picking little aspect of it.   They have nothing negative to say.  NOTHING.  Yes, Johnny can have a drum set.  A DRUM SET.  Are they for real?  I just want to smack them.   Yeah it's selfish.  They annoy the crap out of me because I can't meet that standard.  The bar is just too damn high.  I don't love my mom job.  It's a job I do.  I love my kids by quite frankly they drive me crazy say 75% of the time.  I didn't expect parenthood to be this tough, this demanding.  

So it makes me feel like a bad parent because I don't love all of it.  Then I feel bad and wonder what's wrong with me.  Then I see my daughter laughing her head off and clambering all over me because we're having fun together and think, okay, I'm not such a bad parent after all. I do have fun with them, I'm constantly thinking up fun things we can do together as a family.  Our weekends are primarily spent with trying to do something for the kids.  

I'm convinced that those "perfect" parents are not parent of the year models.  I just think they're some how able to look above all the crap and only see the good stuff.  Kinda like the glass half empty,  glass half full theory.  Whereas I often only see the bad.  

I've been interrupted so many times that I have no idea where I was going anymore or what more I had to say.  I think I had more of a point to make but I'm lost.  

So, is this it?  If so, how can I make life better or more fulfilling because right now I have to say I'm barely getting by and when I die my life will be barely a blip on the radar of life.  How boring I've been.  Sometimes I just wish I had the guts to live life a little more fuller. 

Zeemaid