The price of sanity is $200 and it's for sale at Target

Saturday night I had the motherhood equivalent of a mental breakdown. It was probably 90% lack of sleep, 6% stuff getting shredded daily by the World's Most Annoying Dog, 3% screaming toddler and 1% I really want to move to a new house but can't figure out when it will ever happen. My breakdown culminated in a tearful long distance phone call to my husband while I sat in the garage trying to avoid the newest 4 year old. Because when I babble incoherently into the phone I prefer to pretend I'm alone.

Too bad that 4 year old's like human On Star and immediately tracked me down. So I told her to close the door and go back inside. Technically I might have shrieked it like a banshee but whatever. Let it go. I have.

Then my baby closed the door, dragged a chair over to watch me through the window and periodically tapped on the glass. I know it's sweet that's she's concerned about me. But seriously, it's called needing a moment. I should have hid in a closet instead. Not a little closet with clothes hanging all around me. Because that would be pathetic and sorta creepy. I'm thinking a nice well lit walk in closet. You know, because sitting in a well lit walk in closet is infinitely more normal.

Anyway, my blubbering was mostly a laundry list of tearful complaints that included the house, the annoying dog, the laundry, my weight, the neighborhood, the kids, a lost remote and the color of the sky. My personal favorite was the lost remote. The man's 600 miles away. The odds of him finding it for me are slim.

My husband talked me down from the ledge and suggested I get more sleep. Then he sent out the equivalent of the bat signal and my dad came over to babysit today. Leaving the house without your children probably shouldn't be that awesome but I'm okay with the fact that it was. 5 hours without checking anyone's diaper and $200 in crap from Target and I thought maybe I could last another couple days until my husband gets home.

I even went to a store that doesn't have shopping carts. And I tried on clothes for myself. In the store. There was even a lady in the dressing room area to go get you stuff if you needed a different size. Not that I'm the sort of girl capable of asking a complete stranger to get me stuff let alone tell them my size but still.

And there were cookies outside the dressing room. On a little doily on a silver tray. Which seems like a bit much because who needs cookies when you're trying to cram yourself into jeans and catching glimpses of your flabby stomach under fluorescent lighting. But knowing the cookies are there is sort of pampering all by itself. Which is like the polar opposite of leaning into the backseat of your car to wrestle a screaming kid into a car seat. Which makes seeing cookies on a doily a really nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.