Momma Never Said,”There’d Be Days Like This”

You wake up to your daughter saying, “Mom! It’s time to get up for school.” Crap. My alarm didn’t go off again! So starts the day two times this past week. Luckily those cell phones I hate have an alarm on them and the second time I overslept this week Abby actually got up out of bed and didn’t assume there wasn’t school.  Josh however doesn’t know about setting an alarm even though he is 12 years old. He would prefer to give me the stink eye and ask why he has to go to school any way.

Also for the second time(not in the week but in the month) our refrigerator decided to stop working. That means running downstairs to the other refrigerator to get milk, sandwich meat, etc. for breakfast and to pack lunches.

“Mom, will you make pancakes?”

“We’ve got 4 minutes until you are supposed to be at school, I don’t think so.”

“Can’t we just go late?”

“Just so you can have pancakes for breakfast? No.”

I guess it’s great my kids know breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but a piece of toast with peanut butter on it should suffice.

I quickly make toast and smoothies(yes smoothies because they have to have those and their vitamins every morning), make sandwiches, throw in an apple, a granola bar and call it good. Into the car we hop(yes, I drive them to school when we’re in town, and yes, I know, it’s horrible), I drop them off at school and then return to the house.

Sometime between the previous morning and the current morning a bomb or tornado or some other event ripped my house apart.  There wasn’t a clean area in sight. I think back to the previous day and wonder, “What the heck happened?”  Oh yeah, the band concert.

After school Abby returned home with not one friend but five friends. These friends don’t have houses in town so when there’s an activity happening later in the day instead of going home(30-50 minutes on a bus) they come to our house. I actually really love this. I love having her friends over because they talk to me and I find out more about what is going on then I would have ever  learned through Abby.

Anyway, these five plus Abby and Josh ate tacos in a bag prepared for by Mike. Don’t get me wrong. I love that Mike cooks and I’m super lucky he likes to cook, he even goes grocery shopping. He just doesn’t like to clean up after he cooks, nor do my kids like to clean up after a meal.  So, I put away what needed to be put away and left the rest because we had to get up to the school so I could help out at an introduction to volleyball class for the YMCA and for the band concert afterwards.

The band concert was great and Abby ended up having a white shirt on. That was the catastrophe before the band concert. Abby is always prepared and had her band outfit sitting out in her room for three days so she knew where it was and had it ready. When one friend left the house to go have a real dinner with her parents she accidentally grabbed Abby’s white shirt too.  This made for a bit of excitement since this girl’s family is the last one in town that doesn’t have a cell phone.  Abby had to wait for this girl to get to school to make sure the shirt was indeed in her bag, which it was. Phew.

After the band concert we headed home at by which point I was tired and had other things on my mind(My Singing Monsters among them). Mike went to buy some ice cream, the kids did some homework and off to bed we went.  Fast forward to getting up late for school and returning to the house after dropping the kids off at school.

In the bathroom there were tags and stickers scattered about from Josh’s band clothes. Unlike his sister he wouldn’t try on his clothes until I threatened with, “If you want to wear capri pants and a 3/4 sleeve shirt for the concert then that’s fine but if you don’t then you better try them on to see if they fit so I can get some new clothes if they don’t.”  He opted for the new clothes but of course didn’t bother trying those on until after his shower. After his shower he didn’t bother picking up the tags from the new clothes or the towel from his shower.

In the kitchen were cups and dishes from the previous night’s meal. Grease splatters on the stove and on the countertop had congealed from last night’s cooking. There were also dishes from breakfast and stuff from making lunches out on the counter. Clean dishes were in the dishwasher and in the sink drainer that the kids didn’t put away. It’s their job but if I don’t tell them every day to do it then it doesn’t get done. My bad.

In the living room were ice cream bowls, empty pop cans and empty pop bottles along with some mail scattered about.  Josh’s hockey stick and ball were out and of course the supplies I needed for confirmation class and wood burning for school on Friday were out too. Boots, mittens, jackets and other miscellaneous items that are supposed to go into the closet were on the floor next to the closet.

And in the closet when I pull out the “Lost and Found Box”(all the clothing, sleeping bags and other stuff kids leave here) what do I find but a stash of bird seed.  REALLY? I get that mice like to store food places but why the heck go through the process of moving the food 6 inches away from the bag of bird seed?  Seems kind of silly to me especially when the mouse(hopefully the one and only mouse in our house) met the maker last week.

In any case the house was a disaster area. A good mother would leave everything the way it was and when the kids returned home would have them take care of their responsibilities. A mom who can’t stand messes and always lets her kids off the hook and babies them by making their lunch and breakfast every day, who drives them the 5 blocks to school and who is ruining them for life cleans it up in spite of the fact she would rather play My Singing Monsters.

And in spite of it all. I feel so blessed to have a roof over my head, food to feed my kids(and others), new clothes for Josh to wear, plenty of mittens, a cat that doesn’t kill mice anymore, a white shirt for Abby’s band concert, a dog to poop right in front of our door, a husband who cooks, bird seed to feed the birds and mice, great friends who don’t care that my house is a mess and most of all healthy children, even though they are so far ill-prepared for the real world.

Oh, and don’t forget My Singing Monsters!

Momma never said, “There’d be day’s like this.”