Mon(Wednes)day
There are lots of things I wouldn't mind waking up to. Like Ryan Reynolds the smell of bacon. Or the beautiful sunlight sparkling through the window. Or the blissful chirping of frolicking birds.
But a toddler saying, "There's poop on the floor and I stepped in it," isn't on the list.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what jolted me into (harsh) reality first thing this morning. We have two dogs, and it couldn't be the small delicate turds of our pug - oh, no. The dumping culprit was our lab, who weighs more than my kids and poops like a triceratops. I was pretty pissed off as I scrubbed the carpet. I had a morning to-do list as long as my arm, and children to get ready and schlep off to school, and dealing with a crappy surprise wasn't exactly on my agenda.
By the time I finished, I was running behind schedule. I dashed downstairs to grab the kids' clothes from the dryer - not to mention two pairs of shoes which had gotten muddy in the creek. Here's the thing about boys' wardrobes: they're small. My kids go through jeans so fast that they literally only have one decent pair, maybe two, at any given time - which is why every night, I do laundry and throw it in the dryer before I go to bed. And those two pairs of shoes are my first-grader Coby's ONLY footwear.
So you can imagine my dismay when I realized that our dryer had quit working after I had gone to bed, and was heaped with a load of wet clothing and shoes that my kids were supposed to wear to school in like twenty minutes.
I scrambled around and found two decent pairs of school jeans, and put my second-grader in the least holey-and-grass-stained pair of play jeans I could find. As for the shoes, Coby had to wear them to school damp, and I was sure to throw in a motherly lecture about how "if you wouldn't have worn them in the creek like you weren't supposed to, you wouldn't be in this situation."
While the kids were getting dressed, I was rushing like a madwoman to get my own clothes on because a.) I had to drop them off at school, and I like to be dressed lest something like this happen again, and b.) I had a morning Zumba class to teach. I grabbed my favorite pair of workout pants - the ones I always wear - and pulled them on. That's when I realized the waistband was damp.
Startled, I snatched them off and hesitantly lifted them to my nose.
Freaking cat pee. Vanessa the Terrible had struck again. (Guess who never did make her an appointment to get spayed?) I washed them, but here I was, dryer-less. I wore paint-stained yoga pants to school drop-off in hopes that my Zumba pants would be dry by the time I got home - but no. They were still wet when I put them on.
Getting ready to walk out the door for Zumba, I decided to fix my three-year-old's hair before leaving. But when I sprinkled a little water in it to make it lay down? It foamed. This is what happens when you combine an independent toddler who wants to do everything by himself and a dad who happens to be supervising bathtime and is more than happy to let him. So I had to wash Corbin's hair in the sink. And as if that didn't make me late enough, my "low tire" light came on while I was driving to the gym so I had to stop and air it up. Only it didn't specify which one was low and they all looked fine to me, so I put air in all of them.
Today might be Wednesday, but it was like Monday. On steroids.
It wasn't the kind of morning I'd wish to have. But then I got on Facebook - and I read an article about a woman who was burying her three children and her father, all of whom were killed by a drunk driver. Then I scrolled down and watched a video of a Haitian community literally eating patties made of dirt just to fill their stomachs.
It gave me a very humbling and much-needed dose of perspective. And it helped me to know that - broken dryer and pain-in-the-ass pets and toddlers and low tires and all - I have it made. So very, very made.
... Even on a Monday-ish Wednesday.
But a toddler saying, "There's poop on the floor and I stepped in it," isn't on the list.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what jolted me into (harsh) reality first thing this morning. We have two dogs, and it couldn't be the small delicate turds of our pug - oh, no. The dumping culprit was our lab, who weighs more than my kids and poops like a triceratops. I was pretty pissed off as I scrubbed the carpet. I had a morning to-do list as long as my arm, and children to get ready and schlep off to school, and dealing with a crappy surprise wasn't exactly on my agenda.
By the time I finished, I was running behind schedule. I dashed downstairs to grab the kids' clothes from the dryer - not to mention two pairs of shoes which had gotten muddy in the creek. Here's the thing about boys' wardrobes: they're small. My kids go through jeans so fast that they literally only have one decent pair, maybe two, at any given time - which is why every night, I do laundry and throw it in the dryer before I go to bed. And those two pairs of shoes are my first-grader Coby's ONLY footwear.
So you can imagine my dismay when I realized that our dryer had quit working after I had gone to bed, and was heaped with a load of wet clothing and shoes that my kids were supposed to wear to school in like twenty minutes.
I scrambled around and found two decent pairs of school jeans, and put my second-grader in the least holey-and-grass-stained pair of play jeans I could find. As for the shoes, Coby had to wear them to school damp, and I was sure to throw in a motherly lecture about how "if you wouldn't have worn them in the creek like you weren't supposed to, you wouldn't be in this situation."
While the kids were getting dressed, I was rushing like a madwoman to get my own clothes on because a.) I had to drop them off at school, and I like to be dressed lest something like this happen again, and b.) I had a morning Zumba class to teach. I grabbed my favorite pair of workout pants - the ones I always wear - and pulled them on. That's when I realized the waistband was damp.
Startled, I snatched them off and hesitantly lifted them to my nose.
Freaking cat pee. Vanessa the Terrible had struck again. (Guess who never did make her an appointment to get spayed?) I washed them, but here I was, dryer-less. I wore paint-stained yoga pants to school drop-off in hopes that my Zumba pants would be dry by the time I got home - but no. They were still wet when I put them on.
Getting ready to walk out the door for Zumba, I decided to fix my three-year-old's hair before leaving. But when I sprinkled a little water in it to make it lay down? It foamed. This is what happens when you combine an independent toddler who wants to do everything by himself and a dad who happens to be supervising bathtime and is more than happy to let him. So I had to wash Corbin's hair in the sink. And as if that didn't make me late enough, my "low tire" light came on while I was driving to the gym so I had to stop and air it up. Only it didn't specify which one was low and they all looked fine to me, so I put air in all of them.
Today might be Wednesday, but it was like Monday. On steroids.
It wasn't the kind of morning I'd wish to have. But then I got on Facebook - and I read an article about a woman who was burying her three children and her father, all of whom were killed by a drunk driver. Then I scrolled down and watched a video of a Haitian community literally eating patties made of dirt just to fill their stomachs.
It gave me a very humbling and much-needed dose of perspective. And it helped me to know that - broken dryer and pain-in-the-ass pets and toddlers and low tires and all - I have it made. So very, very made.
... Even on a Monday-ish Wednesday.
Ahhhh..... perspective. But that still sucks. All of it.
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