I'm a grown up. I'm responsible for myself.
I'm also responsible for two little people.
Daily, I find myself doing things that I hate because they need to be done, or because they are the prudent thing to do.
I really hate getting up early in the morning. I mean, most normal people don't care for it, either, but my hatred for getting up early (which is anything before 9:30 am) is quite intense. I wait until the last possible moment to get up and get the kids out of bed to get ready for the day. It takes all the will power I have to get myself to sit up in bed and rub the sleep from my eyes. And even then, I'm not out of bed yet . . . it further takes something akin to grit for me to make myself actually crawl out of bed and force myself into a standing position.
But I get up somewhere between 6:00 am and 7:30 am, depending on the requirements of the day, and I take care of business.
I hate it, but it's something that must be done.
I abhor mowing (or weed eating, actually, since I use a weed eater to do it) and trimming the hedges. I'm not sure what it is about it that I detest, but for some reason I dread doing it, and I will put it off as long as possible. But when the grass gets tall and when my hedges loom 2 feet above my neighbors' shrubbery, I slide into my flip flops and put my hair up into a pony tail, and I go demolish the errant branches and shred the overgrown grass.
I do it because I must. It's my responsibility.
The next couple of weeks for me are filled with "hate to" chores and errands. Yes, the yard needs to be tended to . . . really early mornings are going to come often, and then there are the extras.
Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with Firestone. It's an early morning appointment (yuck!) and I scheduled it that way because I didn't want to have any problems getting the minivan taken care of in time to pick Xavier up from school. It was the prudent thing to do. So, I'll go in to Firestone tomorrow morning and try to look my best because I know that that kind of stuff yields better customer service. I'll try to explain to the guy behind the counter what all is wrong with the minivan and he will take my keys (and I will take the minivan keys off the ring and hand those only to him) and Orian and I will go sit down in the waiting area for several hours.
Orian will play Gameboy for a while and then he will demand a donut. I will buy him one and he will stuff it into his little face and I will be asking the nice Korean lady with the drawn on eyebrows sitting across from us if she would mind watching our stuff while I go scrub the chocolate icing off his face and hands and knees (how did he manage that one?). When we get back out to the lobby he will demand another donut and I will tell him no. He will cry and make his scowling "mean face" at me. We will play together while I attempt to thumb through a People magazine and just about the time when I've sighed and looked at my watch for the fifth time and Orian has cried, "I want to go home. I want to play my video game." for the twentieth time, a cute Hispanic guy with a name badge that says "Mitchell" will walk into the lobby and call my last name.
The guy at the counter will show me the items on my bill and explain to me (patronizingly, of course) why they had to replace this and how I really should bring it back and let them look at that. My bill will be three times what I expected, and I will sigh as I hand over my debit card watch the money in the bank disappear before my eyes.
By the time it's all over with, I will know the life story of the Korean lady and her husband, Major Gilbert and why their son, Mark, decided to become a dentist. I will have taken Orian to the bathroom to wash him up three times. I will have read four and a half pages in the People magazine. I will have defeated 37 bad guys on Power Rangers Ninja Storm, and I will have stepped in something weird and sticky somewhere along the way.
I hate taking the vehicle in. But it's something that must be done.
Then there's grocery shopping . . . and a counseling appointment where I will have to talk about painful and awkward things while Orian builds a fort with the pillows off the sofa and laughs loudly as he says, "I farted!" . . . and of course, there's the pap smear appointment that will be uncomfortable and yet oddly calming in that I will have a short span of time completely to myself (except for the doctor with the speculum and giant q-tip and the chubby male nurse who watches the doctor work and asks me every few seconds if I am doing OK) . . . and when all these things are over, there is still the yard work.
I guess we all are required to do things that we hate . . . and it certainly could be worse . . . I could be having a counseling appointment while getting a pap smear in the Firestone lobby at 5 am.
*sigh*
Responsibility.