Dear ATM Debit Machine

Why must you torment me so?  When I swipe my card, I don't know, can you just REGISTER it?  By registering it, I mean, can you please just read the data and go about your business?  Do I have to answer all these asinine questions before my purchase can be completed?  I think two questions MAXIMUM should be allowed.  Anything more than that is utterly ridiculous, and just an absolute waste of my time and everyone else behind me.

Why, prey tell is it ridiculous, you ask?  I will inform you.

In this world full of instant gratification and multiple choice, we have over delegated options for choices to the debit card machine.  It should be swipe, punch in pin and you're done.  Get out.  Get on with your life.
But, no, wait!, now you have to ask if I have a *special-like fancy* frequent buyer card, and if not, "what's my phone number?".  After that, I swipe my card, yet again, another question irrelevant to my purchase.  "Would I like to donate and support Dolphins with athletes foot?".  I have my own charitable donations I participate in, and no I would not like to participate today.  Do you think that's the end of relentless debit card machine and the twenty questions game?  NO.  Nooooooo.  I'm barely reeling back from the last questions time sink - and pondering my sanity as I feverishly eye-scan the isles adjacent to this machine for my whirling dervish children - next round of questions is, "Would you like cash back?".  No, I don't, I just want this to END... but I can't find the frigging button to select that option since it's hidden and basically like 20 times smaller than the actual size of the other buttons.  THEN I am asked to swipe again.  AGAIN!?!?  Holy mother of all that is decent... I'm about to blow a major fuse and start to spark electricity simultaneously from my butt and ears.  My kids are screaming and running down the isle behind me to my left (outside of eyesight), and the cashier asks me to scan the card again.  OMFG.  I literally exclaim out loud, "AGAIN?!?!?!" and scan it again.  FINALLY the purchase is complete.  Apparently, I have a new frequent special card, my phone number is listed for it's use when ever I want it (DIDN'T ASK FOR THAT AT ALL), and I have donated 50.00 to Dolphins with athletes foot.

I grab the bag, run after my children and gather up what is left of my fragmented brain from this entire experience.  I. NEVER. WANT. TO. GO. TO. A. STORE. AGAIN.  That's it, I'm going to make a garden and just grow everything I  need.  I'll have bushels of things growing fruitfully from trees... things like ear thermometer batteries, lactaid, toothpaste and toilet paper.  Then I won't have to deal with the evil debit card machine EVER AGAIN.

I officially claim today "Tazmanian Devil Day"

In the name of all that is holy... today was a crap storm from hell.  I mean, when you feel like you just ran a marathon by 12 pm, that's a friggin' problem right? 

It probably didn't help that I was up until 12 am with husband last night, or that the youngest one was up at the a** crack of dawn with a nightmare screaming (poor kiddo).  We were gallivanting around our hood in celebration of his birthday all night last night.  Ok, ok, so it was fun, *delightful* in fact.  Here comes the ever present "but"... BUT, it just so happens that this was the fourth day consecutively of little to no sleep (insert stress dreams here) and my level of utter and show stopping exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks slamming down on the concrete sidewalk from the top of the empire state building.  You know you're in trouble when the second iced quattro espresso shot soy latte isn't even opening your eyes.  OH YEAH.  That's commonly referred to in my world as Dante's eighth level of hell.  COMPLETELY unbearable, and especially so with a two and a half year old that has a store of energy at 6:30 am of which only bouncing in a bouncy house at an amusement park would satisfy.  At 9:30 am my eyes would not even remotely open, that's when I knew I needed to pull out the big guns.  I half sleepy eyed jokingly asked my toddler to go fetch me a HUGE Redbull from the fridge... when hubby (to my surprise *actually* heard me, meaning he was LISTENING - HOLY WOW) brings me a 12 ounce Redbull.  Thank you dear god.  I love this man right now. 

So, fast forward, and it's 10:30 am.  I have now cleaned the entire house (4,300 sq ft+) in the last hour (our home is on the market and at any second a potential buyer could request a "showing"), fed said toddler, and packed us to go on our errand run... 1st stop: CVS.  Top priority is to get mommy some anti aging crap so I don't look like a skeleton walking in daylight or worse - Joan Rivers.  Mainly because the stress of this life is stripping away any youth I ever had, and then some.  Second stop: post office to pick up mail (because if I don't, I'll destroy my credit from all the late bills I will have to pay out of sheer neglect), third stop: grocery shopping (I'm so bare bones with food right now, I don't even have OJ and am getting creative with school lunches [read: fruit gummy bears and soy cheese with ritz crackers]), fourth errand: picking up big kid from school (which was also half-assed and late because little one decided to take a monster crap in her pants one minute before I needed to leave to pick up big kid).  It was a melange of psycho paced activity from 10:30 am until 2:30 pm.  I won't bother you with the in between of meltdowns, screaming at the highest octave whilst shopping, and she's trying to jump out of carts or dart out into street... nah, that's not worth typing.  Basically it felt like a race to run through as many activities as you could within 4 hours for a million dollar prize.  Except the million dollars is a facade, and I'm borderline hallucinating from sleep loss.

It all ended with kids eating the fresh dinner I made while I proceeded to do a massive spraying of widow spiders on my property with the most lethal spray I could get my hands on.  This stuff is AWESOME.  I watched as the little eight legged heathen devil Brown Widow spiders writhed in agony drenched in the spray.  I'm sorry, I really do love nature, but I love my children more... and the thought of a property drenched in Brown Widow Spiders is not my idea of a safe abode for my kids.  They stood no chance in the wake of mommy inspired, exhaustion fueled hatred.  I got a HUGE honking one that was connected to my favorite chair on the deck - ACK!  No doubt this was the culprit "mommy" spider giving heathen birth to all these little devils basking out on my deck.  *F---!*

After the kids bath time, cleaning of the ears, hair brushing, and all the other brainless activity I do on a daily basis (all while chasing children screaming in laughter at EVERY turn - absolutely no seriousness toward ritual activity whatsoever) I'm ready for a HUGE dirty martini.  Like an 8 ounce-er.

In summation, after the crap storm today, I feel like a half dead jelly fish, ripped apart by a torturous yacht-y propeller, and left for dead on the beach at the highest heat point of the day and picked at by hungry seagulls, then stepped on by a passer by.  Someone stick a fork in me, and throw me in the dump - I'm sooooooo done.