Hello. My name is The Maven and I did not want to be a mother today. Running away crossed my mind a few times, although I'm still a fairly slow runner and it was rather hot, so I didn't.

Over the course of the last twelve hours, I've sifted through my overwhelmed brain trying to come up with all the sunny, happy things that make being a parent worthwhile. I threw open the emotional filing cabinet and found images of their first days out of my womb, all new and pink and mostly quiet and sleepy. I tried to remember hugs and giggles and oddly drawn blobs that are supposed to resemble me and one of my boys making pancakes.

I wracked my tired and frustrated noggin for those memories and feelings, but came up short. For the most part, every time Gutsy whined or Spawnling wailed, I thought back to 1993, when Geekster and I moved into our first apartment in downtown Ottawa - the Byward Market, to be exact. It was a rather large one bedroom overlooking some shady garages, a few crack houses, and, at night, a wide array of hookers and johns. It was noisy and smelly and frankly rather terrifying to the then sixteen-year-old Maven, but I loved it. Oh, how I loved it.

I try to tell myself I don't miss those days, and normally it's true. I can remember stepping over the broken beer bottles and used condoms every morning on my way to school, and having to walk up the icy fire escape to avoid the drug dealers' massive guard dog in the common hallway downstairs. I tore apart the couches for cigarette change hunt more times than I can count, and sang with my guitar on Rideau Street in hopes of getting enough cash for dinner that night.

My world today sharply contrasts that of half a lifetime ago. I drive a minivan, I live in a four bedroom house in the 'burbs, I *gasp* garden, and, oh yes, I have three boys who drive me absolutely insane sometimes and make me wish I was still digging "new" furniture out of the trash every week.

It's not that I don't love them. I do. I really do. I mean, do I even have to say that? And I feel horrible admitting that I envy the childless, or that, in rare moments of insanity, I sometimes daydream about being divorced only so I would have at least every second weekend to myself; a true sign of burnout if I've ever heard one, because I know enough single parents to ever think it's a cakewalk.

From the moment I woke up - at 3:00AM, then 3:45, then 5:30, then 6:00, and finally with a series of pokes on the forehead from the toddler at 8:30, the two little gremlins have been sapping every ounce of positivity from me. I've lost count of the near deafening demands for everything from attention to a third glass of milk ("No. You can have water. I don't care if you don't want water, you can... Hey! Don't dump that on the floor. What are you doing?")

By 5:00PM I had exhausted every tactic, every threat (oh, sorry: "promise of action" - it's all about how you frame it) and every follow-up from time-outs on the stairs to mopping up spilled water with a rag and not a mop, because that might be considered fun - and they certainly didn't deserve much of that today.

I made a pitiful dinner of cheese ravioli from a bag in the freezer, topped with tomato sauce from a half-empty jar in the fridge. I grated cheese on top of the already fat-laden dinner so I wouldn't be asked to do it and hence have to say 'no' for the three hundredth time. It's all about picking the battles.

At 6:00PM, when everyone had a belly full of bleached, enriched, cholesterol stuffed crap, Geekster and I enacted the long awaited end-game maneuver of wearing Gutsy and Spawnling out at the park. We ran up ladders and slid down slides and built sandcastles. We pretended we were thieves coming to steal their precious sand toys. We were customers at their restaurant and ate everything from buckets full of "popcorn" to shovels full of "tea". I think I might still have sand on the inside of my bottom lip.

I like to go for realism. I'm a method actor, some would say.

I hurt myself on the slide, even. See?


No. Look. I did! I'm going to call it 'slide burn' because it sounds cool, like I did some sort of extreme sport.

At 7:30 we put two tuckered out little gremlins into their pods for the night. As I sat down to bitch blog about my day, I asked Geekster to send me the pictures he took on his iPhone. I ranted and I raved up and sputtered and nearly pounded the keyboard in frustration until about two paragraphs ago, when I checked my inbox and found out, in not so many words, what was missing about that romantic childless life we had in the market:









Them.



And now I kind of feel like an asshole.

Oops.