The typical Thursday approaches and I am dreading the long day ahead, classes until 6:30 at night that puts me home at 7:30 after leaving for school at 8 am....whew long day! But the bright side is that once it’s over I only have one short class on Friday and the whole weekend ahead....yay! Of course this enthusiasm for freedom is really the knowledge that once the school week is over the housework begins. After turning my head away from the tower of dishes overflowing the sink and the heaps of wrinkled clothes and leaning stacks of laundry that blanket the pool table, Saturday and Sunday transform me into a cracked out housekeeper, busily trying to mop and dust simultaneously, and I’m lucky to get laundry done, folded and crammed into a basket in the right person’s room...the whole concept of putting laundry away is just a lost cause at the rate we go through clean clothes.
But this day we were running late, Tristan slept in until 8, and I hate waking up such a sleeping angel, especially since when I wake him up he is already resentful at me for being awake (hm, can’t imagine where he gets that from) and the mood of the morning is already set to stress level: yellow. We pack up the car as if going on a road trip out of state for a week, but this is the baggage that goes along with having kids. I’ve got their jackets, pull-ups, wipes, sunscreen, spare clothes, travel-potty, and a lunch bag for their picnic dinner with my friend who babysits them on campus for my last class of the day (since the daycare closes right as that class begins and if I don’t take that class it will postpone my graduation until the following Fall).
Almost there....we exit the freeway, make our way to the daycare/preschool when Ashlyn says she’s sick, and I dismiss it somewhat because this girl is a drama queen and always feigns illness as part of her character study. But the strawberry-banana yogurt vomit that spews down her chin and slimes her entire front side, even finding a way to get in her strawberry curls of hair, makes me feel like mother-of-the-year at reacting to my child’s sick cues. At least I am only half mile from parking and not stuck in the sticky traffic that began our journey this morning, turning a five mile stretch of freeway into a twenty minute study of bridge construction and impromptu preschool lesson about cranes and diggers.
After using an entire package of wipes to bathe Ashy, I wring out the carseat and soaked straps while the kids hang out in the back of the SUV blowing bubbles and coloring in their coloring books as I hold back my own urges to vomit at the stench of the mess that’s now absorbed into my skin like lotion. I guess the thing that makes me a real mom now is how I don’t rush home and hop right into the shower, but just spray some Victoria’s Secret Vanilla Lace body spray on me and rub antibacterial gel all over. Good as new!
Back at home now when I should be in class, but I haven’t missed one yet this quarter so I will be forgiven...and it gives me a chance to start and finish the midterm essay that’s due tomorrow morning...and then I have the whole weekend to relax.
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