Yesterday morning I drove to Kerrville to speak to a MOPS group.
(This is where I’d like to insert my standard joke about how P likes to call it “Mothers Against Preschoolers” but I’m pretty sure that I’ve already made that comment about fifteen different times here. Not to mention that I referenced it in my talk yesterday. I need some new material.)
I talked about the challenges of being a mother and felt a little bit like MY LIFE IS SO HARD WITH MY SOLITARY SEVEN-YEAR-OLD CHILD WHO DRESSES AND FEEDS HERSELF because, seriously, if there is a group of women who are singlehandedly populating the Earth, it’s the women in MOPS groups. I mean they are smack dab in the thick of potty-training a toddler while fighting morning sickness and hoping their oldest child doesn’t cry during the Kindergarten drop-off. They make me weep with envy at the thought of their multi-tasking skills. Mainly because I operate on an organizational system that consists of sixteen different Post-It notes with important dates written on them shoved into the bottom of my purse.
Anyway, I offered my limited amount of wisdom with the disclaimer that my child is only seven years old and the verdict is still out on how this whole thing is going to turn out. Then I got in my car and drove back to San Antonio and listened to the following songs over the next hour:
The Happy Song by Chris Tomlin
Jesus Saves by Travis Cottrell
Peaceful, Easy Feeling by The Eagles
Heart of Glass by Blondie
Wanted: Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi
Jolene by Dolly Parton
Gold Digger by Kanye West
Our God by Chris Tomlin
Looks Like We Made It by Barry Manilow
I feel like something about this list speaks volumes about my personality, but frankly I’m frightened to examine it too closely.
As soon as I got back to the house I crawled over to the couch and slept for about an hour. Mainly because I didn’t sleep at all the night before because I never sleep the night before I have to be somewhere important. It’s a sickness. And I usually take down every one around me because P didn’t sleep either thanks to all my deep sighs and fake coughs and tossing and turning.
I am a joy to live with.
Finally it was time to pick up Caroline from school and we went to Gap to buy her a new pair of jeans because she is dying to wear jeans even though it’s still 146 degrees outside and her legs have grown about seventeen inches since last spring.
My goal for tomorrow is to clean my house from top to bottom. I’ve been putting it off for about the last week because I get so overwhelmed with the thought of having to clean two bathrooms. I KNOW. It’s pathetic.
But when we moved in this house thirteen years ago, it was only a three bedroom, one bath house. Apparently people didn’t spend a lot of time in the bathroom in the 1920’s. Probably because the curling iron hadn’t been invented.
(Please don’t email me to tell me that the curling iron had been invented. It may have been for all I know but it’s late and I’m too tired to look it up on Wikipedia or the Google.)
The point is that for six years I just had to clean one small bathroom. Then we moved out and added a master bedroom and bathroom. For those of you playing at home, that means we moved on up Jefferson style to two bathrooms total. But it didn’t matter because I had a baby two weeks after we moved back in and we hired a maid to do all the cleaning.
I’ll be honest. It was a blissful existence. But then I quit my job three and a half years ago and we had to tighten the proverbial belt and the maid had to go. And now I can never face the task of cleaning my house without feeling complete dread at the the thought of those two bathrooms, one of which has a shower stall AND a bathtub. OH THE HUMANITY.
Truth be told, we could probably work a maid back into our budget at this point, but I haven’t done it on principle. I should have time to clean my own house. I have one child in school all day and no real job. Well, technically, I guess I kind of have a job as a writer but it looks eerily similar to just sitting around in my pajamas all day looking at Twitter.
Although during our road trip with the kids this summer, Gulley’s son Jackson declared that I didn’t have a job and Gulley was quick to defend me with “She writes. That’s what she does.” And from the back seat, her youngest son, Will, piped up and said, “AND SHE BUILDS FLOATS FOR FIESTA“.
I’m totally putting that on my next resume.