The bottom of the trench

Since this little exercise in navel gazing known as my blog is called in the trenches, I thought I'd use the metaphor a little more tonight.
I am currently residing at the bottom of the trench which, if any of the movies and books I've read about war are to be believed, is where most of the crap and vermin reside.
It's not even that today was all that bad, I just felt badly. I had no excuse for it, the sad just showed up and stayed with me all day. I cleaned my kitchen, fed my children, worked on some sewing, read a book, ate some chocolate, all in an attempt to rid myself of the sad but nothing worked.
By the time Dilbert called me from his car as it sped toward home I was a well concealed wreck. He asked me if I wanted to meet him with the kids at our local gun shop, otherwise known as his happy place. He's been wanting to get one for me for a while now and thanks to the joy of the tax refund and our two little deductions, we sortof have the money for it at the moment. I'm not terribly jazzed about it but I'm not against the idea either so I agreed to meet him and just keep the sad pushed down for the others present.
Then I tried to get the kids ready to leave the house.
They'd gone outside that day but they hadn't actually had any shoes on and Pudding was wearing a shirt that was way too small for her and had to be changed. And Pudding didn't want to change the shirt, then she didn't want to wear those socks, then she didn't want to wear any socks and why couldn't she just go barefoot and why did we have to go anyway and on and on and on. I called Dilbert and told him the outing was off.
Normally I have no issues with stuffing either of my children into the required clothing and frog marching them out the door but today was not a day that I wanted to yell at my children. I don't ever really want to yell at them but today was a day where I didn't have the energy and the will to do battle with them. All my mental energy was used up today in keeping the sad contained and I just didn't have any left over. I felt like I was looking up at the looming battle from the bottom of my little trench and what I needed to do right then was keep myself from drowning, not fight. Survive and live to fight another day.