Staggeringly lame

The longer I travel this mommy path, the more I realize how screwed I am. Not the sunniest outlook, but it’s all I can manage at the moment. I remember when Loren was about three and it was just him and me living together in our small apartment while I finished up school. We spent our mornings reading books and our afternoons at the many parks Ft. Collins had to offer. It was a relatively quiet and simple life. It was tiring, Matt and I were separated, and I was finishing up my degree. But I managed to do well in school, keep the apartment clean and I was a stellar mom to my little guy.
Fast forward 11 years and the best adjective I have for my parenting is ineffective. Loren and Cassidy cannot even hold a conversation without bickering. Cass has become so down trodden that she will barely speak to her older brother. Loren is a full blown teen with a sudden influx of issues I can’t even write about here. This morning Devon went to preschool in his sister’s socks for the second day in a row. He doesn’t mind pink. It used to be that I would say something and it meant something, carried weight. Now I am simply a dumb fuck who can be buttered up to hand over the ever needed $20.
It’s been a long winter and the never ending snow has taken a toll on my psyche. Spring sucks in the Rocky Mountains, mostly because there is no such thing as spring here. It snows for an eternity and then melts one day, only to be replaced by another foot in the night. Then the mud comes and sometime in late May the flowers briefly bloom and then it is summer. But between the snow and the mud there is wind, more snow and bitter cold. I often think April and May are the cruelest of months here in the mountains. I have recently dealt with this all by watching the last three seasons of Grey’s Anatomy in a little under eight days. It was hard work but I managed to stay up late and slip in an episode early in the mornings before the kids woke up. The experience has left me with a burning case of job envy. No, not to be a surgeon. But to have a regular job of nearly any kind. My God, to dress up in clothing and converse with adults all day? How freaking cool is that? Not everybody would be as beautiful as the folks in Seattle Grace, but there’s got to be a McSteamy out there say in the finance world or maybe in the greeting division of Wal Mart. Surely there must be more to it all than this, this brown, muddy life that is currently everywhere I look.