Onions

Some days I wake up, and I know I can't do this any more. I want to hide my head under the pillow and wait for the bad dream to pass. At 5am when I hear the girls giggling in their room and my response, is to cry a little into my pillow before racing off to the toilet, and sometimes to puke into the bathtub at the same time.

When the carefully choreographed morning routine just seems insane, that anyone would try and get so much done before 7am. Of putting on clothes and instead of celebrating my new curves being resentful that nothing fits and that maternity workwear has not come far from muumuu days. Of how uncomfortable driving the car is. Of being so over it already that when the girls do their uber cute routine of blowing me kisses out of the car window and demanding I reciprocate my response is lukewarm instead of the usual warm fuzzies.

Of following consultants on rounds and not being able to joke around. To follow them around like a demented puppy dog while scribing like a mad woman. Of feeling like you did 10 years of uni to become a tape recorder. Of not remembering some sort of hierarchical protocol and dancing the dance and getting berated for it. Of ordering tests that you can't see the point of and for people who are going to die anyway. For people who still can't remember your name even though you've been the one seeing them twice a day for 3 weeks.

Of being so tired that you eat chocolate chip cookies even when you know that they will cause you to crash harder in half an hour. When you will catch the lift instead of the stairs and then berate yourself for being lazy.

I pick up the Elfling and today we're missing the hat, waterbottle and sheets and fuck knows where the socks are. I am insanely angry about the fact that we have bought 14 pairs of socks in the last 3 weeks and I still have difficulty in the mornings finding a single matching pair. And because I am tired and angry it makes it really hard to be warm and enthusiastic as I ask about her day. Even when I take really deep breaths. And then, after the effort and the trying so hard to be a proper mother, the answer is invariably a shrug and a cheerful "I don't remember".

Pick up the Monkey and her jubilant hugs still can't pierce it. They giggle in the backseat on the way home and all I'm thinking about is dinner, which I have to make in the next 45 minutes and needs to be nutritional and filling. And cheap. While entertaining them at the same time, until it is placed piping hot on the table just as Bingley walks through the door. He takes one look at my blotchy face and asks what's wrong.

The onions I say, gesturing towards the cutting board.

Onions.