I'm not all that.

Seriously. I'm not.

So many times, people have told me how much they admire me for being able to "keep it together" or whatever. They think that I'm so strong or so brave or so ...... whatever ..... because I'm a single mom with 5 kids and I'm not in an asylum (yet).

I've got news for you.

I put up a good front sometimes.

The past couple of days have - to put it bluntly - sucked. The kids have not been cooperating, I haven't felt good, and to be totally honest, I just have not been too terribly happy with much of anything around me.

I don't usually put that out here. Why? Am I afraid of being judged for how I feel at times? Yep. Darned right I am. Am I afraid of being criticized? Yep. That too. So I don't usually talk about the bad days.

But you know what? I'm human. And right now, I'm having a crappy time. And it's nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about or anything like that. It's normal.

I've talked about my depression before - so it's not like it's a big secret. For the most part, it's not a big deal. However, for whatever reason, my body has decided to do all sorts of wonky stuff to me, my hormones are in a rage, and I'm just really really moody.

Honestly, I have no real reason to be down. My life is good awesome right now. My kids are amazing, even if they have been at each others' throats lately. They are healthy and their grades are off of the charts at school and they are just plain amazing. I have a wonderful man in my life who loves me in spite of all of my quirks and weirdness and mood swings, and he loves my kids too.

And as much as I would like to just crawl into bed and hide under the covers or curl up on the couch with Ben & Jerry and the remote, I can't do it because I have 5 little humans that get crankier than normal if I don't pay enough attention to them and feed them and take them to school and stuff like that.

So I will deal with my moods as much as I can. I will more than likely stand here for half of the night cutting fabric for some projects in order to keep my hands busy. Sarah will be back here after a football game tonight so that I can take her to Ex1's church in the wee hours of the morning to go on a trip with the youth group there. And then the boys and I will be spending the day running errands all over the place. And hopefully by keeping myself busy, I can keep some of the blues away at the same time. If all goes according to plan, The Dude and I will get to spend some quality time together this weekend as well - which is always a good thing.

So yeah, I'm not perfect. I'm not WonderMom, I'm not a superhero, I'm not anything special. I'm just a mom who loves to talk about the good days, but doesn't always like to admit that there are bad ones too.

At the same time, I know that the bad days will pass and the good ones are waiting just around the corner - and admitting that there are bad days doesn't make me a bad person.

Just blah.

Today has just been one of those days.

My friend and I got up this morning and talked some more about her situation, but she couldn't stay around too long because she had to get back to her kids, who had spent the night at their grandparents' house. So once we got up and moving, we headed back down that direction. For a lot of different reasons, she's going to stay in the town where they live (about 50 miles from here) for now, knowing that they are always welcome to come here any time that they need to do so. She's really struggling with their situation, but I know that she will make it through it all - she's a very strong person and she's a fighter.

On the way back here, the boys and I stopped at the library and picked up some movies and a few books before we came home. We just hung around the house for most of the day while I finished cleaning up and reorganizing everything. I'm glad that I got the rearranging done - it's something that I've been wanting to do for a while, and now that it's done I really like how it came out.

I tried really hard to not do anything this afternoon, but of course that didn't work out the way that I had planned. I ended up stripping all 3 of the boys' beds and remaking them, washed the curtains in my now-bedroom after I realized how incredibly nasty they were, worked on my taxes, and did a few other odds and ends around the house.

We did have a little bit of excitement with a tiny little storm that came and went in about 15 minutes. The boys loved watching the hail come down, even though it didn't really amount to much.

But now, I am in a really horrible mood. I'm tired and cranky and sore and moody and I either want to beat the snot out of something or curl up in a ball and cry, but the tired is starting to take over so I think I might actually just go to bed and see if I can sleep through the night without any bizarre dreams. With my luck I'll be awake every few hours again, trying to determine if the last dream I had was just a dream or reality. (In case you haven't figured it out, yes, it's PMS time for me. Deal with it.)

Here's hoping that tomorrow is a better day.