One of these kinds of days

After slamming the door to their room, after slamming the cabinet doors as I put the dishes in the dishwasher away, after making as much noise as I possibly could to express how completely over my head FED UP I am of today's particularly protracted naptime battle, I found myself screaming at the top of my lungs:

"All that I want is for you to NAP at NAPTIME! All that I need is for you to SLEEP when YOU are EXHAUSTED! IT IS NOT TOO MUCH TO ASK!"

But, of course, it is. I don't know why and it's hard for me to understand how human beings lasted this long when we are so completely aggravating to our parents as children. But today, apparently, it IS absolutely too much to ask.

Unfortunately it is also too much to ask of me, apparently, to suck it up and accept that. Honestly, I'm about ready to slam my head through the sliding glass doors listening to them fight off sleep. Sanity, of course, would be to somehow come to terms with the fact that if at a quarter to three if they aren't asleep then I don't want them to fall asleep, either. But it's just one of those days when I am done with their company. I need a break -- and the only way I can get one is if they stay in there for just a couple of hours and be QUIET.

Thank God these days don't come around often. Because, wow, they are humiliating, exhausting and demoralizing beyond belief when they do.

For right now, the miracle is that I finished my lunch and I'll make it to dinner without any additional food. That's not a small something. But it doesn't make it all that much easier to look myself in the mirror and face how completely outmatched I feel right now, and how sad that is. And how hateful it is to pit myself against my children. Feeling pretty flippin' low about that right about now. And wishing very much that I knew where to draw the resources to be the mother I'm sure everyone else is -- patient and kind, or in charge and controlled. I'm none of that today.

Today I'm at my wit's end, holding the bedroom door shut and insisting that I don't care what they do just so long as they stay in there until I've had a chance to catch my breath.