Loath as I am to admit it, I'm beginning to come to the following conclusion: it is damned near impossible to single parent six children and do justice to anyone. In fact, I'm actually thinking it would be really hard under the best of circumstances, which in my mind would be: parents who really love each other very deeply and are the natural and commited parents of all six kids, with ample financial resources, a big enough house, out in the country with homegrown food and all that jazz. It might be pretty doable with extended family, if they were decent caring people who could be trusted with the children (i.e., not to hit them, sit them in front of a boob tube all day, etc).

Okay, so I'm feeling burned out. Look, I'm in a one bedroom house, which no matter how often I clean it, gets messed up again. Making them help me doesn't work, because as soon as I get one or two of them to lend a hand and we're a happy group, one of the others comes careening excitedly into view ("come and see this!!!") and disrupts things. I'm really trying to find a place of our own, but the only current possibility is a place half the size of this one, with no electricity or phone and possibly no water, either (well, duh, without power for the water pump, what good is the well?).

Moreover, the baby and I have both got a cold. He isn't sleeping well because his nose is stuffed up. Since the thought of having my kid sleep in a crib away from me is anathema, I don't get much sleep either. (I honestly don't know how people can sleep at all with their baby in another room. I'd worry all night long....)

Work, strangely enough, has become the solace from my homelife. There is a structure, and a schedule that always turns out pretty much as planned. It certainly isn't quiet there (they tested the fire alarm system today, eeeeek!) but it isn't the nerve-wracking stress of one impending disaster after another while you're trying to soothe the baby to sleep. The daycare provider dotes on the baby, and I can tell it isn't just when I'm there, because he's always happy and smiling when I come to get him...so while he's always in my mind, I don't worry, either. There is a rhythmn and a continuity to the work that is lacking at home, because I don't have the energy to enforce the sort of structure that I'd like to see here.

!! Charlie is crying!! :signs off: