just one of those days

you know one of those days when the hubs is working a 14-hour day and so it’s all on you to get the kids up, and changed, and dressed, and fed, and lunch made, and hustled out the door, and got to school on time, and gas bought cuz it’s on empty and oh my why is it $4.55 a gallon now?!, and back home to clean up breakfast dishes, and change the baby’s poopy diaper (and it doesn’t make the task any cuter to call it “poopy”),  and put the baby down for nap, and vacuum the endlessly shedding rug, and then homeschool the second grader, and get so engrossed in a pilgrim unit inspired “scrubbing day” with the second grader that the time completely slips your mind, and then you rush off like a madwoman because you’re totally late now to pick up the preschooler, and you get there only to find her sitting there alone with the teacher but thankfully they are reading a picture book together and the teacher gives you grace you don’t deserve and an understanding smile saying it happens to all of us, and then you get back home to finish scrubbing the bathrooms and make lunch, and clean up after lunch, and read aloud from “the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe”, and make pumpkin chocolate muffins with the preschooler, only to realize you’re now running late to pick up the first grader, so you rush off and manage to get there just in time, and then you get back home to finish baking the muffins, and you throw in a load of laundry, and pluck the baby off the top of the bunkbed ladder, and start in on the first grader’s homework, and fall sound asleep as she does her prescribed 20 minutes a day of reading aloud to you, and wake up to discover she has finished reading and is now coloring in her room, and the baby is playing with dirty diapers from the trash can, and you ask God for strength, and you start dinner realizing it’s almost six o’clock now, stepping over and around the baby as he’s intently emptying every single plate, bowl, and utensil out of the kids’ drawers and onto the floor, and you wonder why in tarnation you took the advice of an older mom who suggested putting all kid-ware in lower drawers so that the kids can practice being helpful early on when actually it’s just an irresistible invitation to the baby any and every time he goes in to the kitchen, and you get interrupted because the preschooler needs help wiping, and you get interrupted again because the baby pooped again, and you throw in yet another load of laundry before resuming making dinner, and then realize you didn’t preheat the oven for the meatloaf so that’s going to take another fifteen minutes, and then kid by kid comes up asking when is dinner because they are starving, and then you realize it’s getting close to when hubs is supposed to finally be home so you text asking if he’s on his way only to get a one-word response, “trauma”, so you hold out a bit longer hoping he’ll show, but no, so you serve up dinner to the starving kids since it’s now a quarter to eight, and you slump into your seat and your son looks at you sympathetically and asks if you’re tired, and you say yes and appreciate his noticing, and you realize bedtime is quickly approaching but you still have to sit through piano practice with the two olders, and they all still need baths/showers because it can’t wait til tomorrow since hubs is working a 36-hour shift then and won’t be around to help anyway, so you do the piano practice and then hurriedly put the baby down to sleep, and get the older three showered as quickly as possible only to see hubs come through the door just as the last kid is getting the last rinse (he has always had impeccable timing), and so the kids brush teeth, get bible story read, tucked in bed, and you collapse on the couch thanking God for this perfectly ordinary day but also thinking now would be a good time to see if a mike’s hard lemonade is as good as regular old lemonade because you’ll be back on single-handedly running the whole show again tomorrow.  and the next day.

yeah, just one of those days.