Finally. I am finally sitting down for the day. I’m snuggled up on my favorite seat. My contacts are out, and my glasses are on. My feet are pulled up beside me, and I’m sporting my favorite comfy pajamas. “Me Time” at its finest. Finally.
This morning, I had to wake my older daughter four times. This is better than the six times I had to tell her to stop talking and go to sleep last night, but it’s about three times too many. I would let her sleep in and be tardy to school, but quite frankly, she’d gladly take that punishment just to catch a few extra zzzz’s in the morning.
My younger daughter, who wakes up ready to take on the world, fixed her own cereal. Then she discovered we didn’t have milk, so she fried herself an egg, but the edges got too crispy to eat. So she made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She used the good china and three spoons. Both sides of the sink were full from her breakfast dishes.
On our way to school, we turned around no less than four times to retrieve things from home: a lunch box, the lunch that belonged in that lunch box, geography homework and shoes. Not any special shoes…just shoes. The lesson of the morning is this: You must wear shoes to school.
And that was all before 8:00am, y’all!
After school, I left a meeting and raced to my younger daughter’s school to pick her up. Then we raced across town to pick up my older daughter from the library. Heading home with both daughters in tow, I realized that, while I had a crockpot dinner planned, I hadn’t actually put the dinner in the crockpot. I’m no gourmet, that’s for sure…but I do know that, in order for the family to eat the meal, it must be cooked.
I dropped one daughter off at her softball practice and took another daughter to play practice on my way to my second meeting. I called the pizza place.
I arrived at the meeting late to discover that I was the only one there. The meeting was actually the day before. I had mixed emotions. On one hand, I wondered what I missed. On the other, I didn’t really care because it was one less meeting I’d have to attend.
I got a text from my husband telling me that he was taking care of dinner and had ordered pizza for us. Almost immediately after that text, I got another from the pizza joint telling me my order was ready—this was about two hours before I was actually planning to serve dinner.
I drove to play practice and picked up my first-born. I swung by the softball fields and picked up my baby. About twelve hours after we all raced out the door that morning, we all met up at home again. As we scarfed down our mountains of pizza, we cussed and discussed algebraic equations, partial sum algorithms, longitude, latitude and insect classifications.
I sat at the kitchen table pondering the fact that, inside my freezer, I had more insects in specimen jars than food.
We loaded the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and threw away the dishes from our pizza fest. We fed the cats and dog. We started a load of laundry so that someone would have clean underwear in the morning.
Okay, fine. It was me. I was completely out of underwear.
My husband supervised tooth brushing while I searched for clean pajamas. Kisses were shared, prayers were prayed, lights were turned off and covers were tucked under still-dirty chins.
“You look tired,” my husband said as I scrambled around the living room picking up fifteen shoes (not pairs…just shoes…they weren’t matches).
“You need some rest,” my life’s partner said as I tossed my now-clean underwear into the dryer.
“Why don’t you take some ‘Me Time,’” he suggested as I put the pizza-stained paper plates back into the trash and swatted at the cats with the broom.
“Good idea,” I sighed as I took a glass of water back to a dry and parched nine year old that was dying of thirst.
So, I am finally sitting down for the day. I’m snuggled up on my favorite seat. My contacts are out, and my glasses are on. My feet are pulled up beside me, and I’m sporting my favorite comfy pajamas. Sure, it’s 3:17am, but a momma’s gotta do what a momma’s gotta do.
