I have chronic exhaustion.
My days are long and torment me. My captors are people I believe love me, but at this point it’s rather convoluted.
My morning starts at 5:30am. I don’t wake up to Foldgers and the aroma of cinnamon buns. Instead I wake up to bickering. I roll out of bed and venture towards the shouting and discover inside my kitchen, it has snowed. A Rice Krispy blizzard has wreaked havoc on my counter-tops and floor. It’s going to take a plow to find the bottom!
The sight of me in the morning must be horrendous as the moment I am visible, silence…sweet silence…is heard and then like cockroaches the children scatter seeking a safe hideout.
I crunch my way across the kitchen to find the broom and dustpan. In my tattered robe, I find my kitchen again; one dust pan at a time.
The children are served breakfast–no. NOT Rice Krispy’s…though I won’t deny it didn’t cross my weary mind. I announce I’m going to go potty and brush my teeth, “I’ll be right back.”
I haven’t gone to the bathroom alone for 20 years. Little hands creep under the door. Knocks and tattle tales interrupt me. I should have known something was wrong when I had five minutes without interruption. Instead I felt victorious!
Until….
I came back through the kitchen. The Rice Krispies plowed, I was ready to start my own breakfast. In those five minutes it rained Sunny D…at first I didn’t notice. I walked, barefoot across the floor. The floor where two kitchen towels were used to…spread around the Sunny D. It was sticky and nearly pulled the flesh from my feet!
With a smile plastered across my face, I kneel down with soap and water and clean the stick from the linoleum.
The remote is lost to the television. It’s stuck on “mute”. Trust me, I’m not complaining.
Moving on to get kiddos ready for school, my six years old announces its “Wear Pajamas to School Day”. I have heard nothing of this. I read through ALL the papers that came home yesterday. Nope! No mention of wearing pajamas to school. She throws a fit until I finally get a hold of someone at the school. Sure enough, it’s “Wear Pajamas to School Day”. Now, my six year old is mad at me because I ‘didn’t believe” her. She ignores me for the next 15 minutes.
Out the door and to the bus stop.
Back home without adventure.
I dust the living room and mop the floors.
It’s a relatively normal morning. Charlotte the Great comes by and I get some mending done while we visit.
Short day today at school, so I start getting ready and realize Li’l Man is M.I.A. I spend 20 minutes seeking him with no luck. I’m pretty panicked. I dislike this game of hide-n-go-seek. We’ve played it before. I’m contemplating calling 9-1-1.
The bus pulls up at the bus stop. Of course I’m not there (I can see the bus stop from my porch). I’m still searching for a child, who after today, I’m not certain it’s a good investment to find. (I’m kidding, of course. Maybe) I come around the side of the house and out the front door walks Li’l Man. “Did you hear me calling you?”
“Yep.”
I want to scream. I want to scream. I will not scream.
We spend the next hour at battle over Nap Time. My army of one lost. They outlasted me in the battle and it became something I no longer had the stamina to compete.
Piles of winter clothes are dragged out of dressers to sort for sizing and separated into donation bags. Whines of “BUT that’s my most favorite shirt/pants/dress/shoes, etc.”
Then hubby comes home. Upstairs he “needs me”. I leave my post and take a chance through the school of my piranha children. I make it out alive!
I walk into the bedroom, where my husband announces he has to go out of town for business. “When?” I ask.
“At 6:30 tonight.”
“And you’ll be back…..?”
“Around 3-ish tomorrow.”
Seriously, my house might as well be the house in Amityville at this point.
I’m watching my husband push the dresser drawer in and out, take a look…in and out…take a look. I finally ask, “What are you doing?”
“I’m out of underwear.”
“Wow. I don’t know how to tell you this, BUT it doesn’t automatically reload.”
“I don’t have any underwear.”
Yeah, like I didn’t hear him the first time. “When did you realize this?”
It’s a simple question and I already know what’s going to be said. Are you ready?
“I put the last pair on this morning.”
Uh-huh. “So? When you put on that LAST pair, did it occur to you to take your laundry downstairs?”
“No.”
“Did it occur to you to leave me a note?”
“No.”
“Did it occur to you when you called me three times to “check in” today to tell me?”
“No.”
I just look at him. He looks back dazed and confused.
It was then I see a lump under the bed spread. I reach in and discover the remote to the TV downstairs. Heading downstairs, with underwear to wash before the trip, I stop and say before my children, “Hey. I found the remote! It was under the covers of my bed, upstairs.”
Eyeballs stair at me and then my four year old looks like a deer caught in headlights and says, “Hmmm. THAT’S Crazy!”
Out of the washroom I venture into the living room where TWO of my children are on the WRONG side of the railing, leaning back as far as they can. It’s an 8′ drop to the bottom stair from where they are. “Get off of there!”
“You’re a big meanie!” They chime.
It’s a no win situation. I’m either a Big Meanie now or a Neglectful Mom at the ER. Decisions! Decisions!
Dinner was abandoned to “see my blood” as the children took turns pulling their eyelids back as far as they could.
Husband has escaped! He’s heading out of town…clean underwear and all.
I say, “I can’t wait to take a hot bath” to which someone nearly plows me down hollering, “I’ll get the timer!”
I’m so packing my bags and running away….
I’m done.?
Please don’t alert the authorities, I’m joining Mom’s Night Out for some fun!
Julee Morrison is the writer behind the blog, Mommy’s Memorandum. As the mom to six her outlet is baking. She vents her emotions through flour and butter. While she realizes there are the tried and true endorphin-inducers like exercise, being thankful and eating healthy, she prefers to live in the fast lane: real butter, a new recipe with a gazillion calories and laughing until she sobs…and of course blogging until her mind is numb and her fingers bleed. She’s perky, quirky, dorky. A Utah native with an appetitie to taste the world, meet its desserts and tell tall tales!
