A Day in the Life

Okay, so I don't actually have an interesting enough day for a full blog, three quarters of it would be devoted to "looks at spreadsheets and says hrmmmmm" but my morning routine, now that is a "horse of a different color" as they say.

As a mom that works outside the home I have certain day to day responsibilities that require a timely exit of my house, usually no later than 7:30 (which it is right this minute actually, so this blog will have to be completed once i have a break form work.)

Okay, so I'm back, its now 9:55pm two days later and I'm finally ready to finish this post. If this weren't waiting in my drafts for completion I'm sure everyone would be waiting with baited breath for the run down of my morning routine.

So, I start my morning by smacking my alarm clock and calling it an asshole, my husband, thinking it would be less traumatizing to wake up to, bought me an alarm that starts with a soft beep, and then gradually increases in intensity as you ignore it. While the thought is nice, the reality is far more annoying. Picture your little one standing at the side of the bed while you are fast asleep just watching and breathing...then whispering, “mama”. You ignore it, of course, thinking you might possibly still be dreaming...then it becomes a little more insistent... “Mom, I'm hungry, mom”....then, just as you’ve convinced yourself that she’s big enough to take care of herself and start to drift back into REM sleep, the full fledged "I’m getting my own cereal and I’ve dropped the gallon of milk on my foot and this is all your fault you lazy bitch..." screaming mode. Startling and unpleasant.

Once the shrieking has subsided, I roll over to find that the pink one has again made her way to my bed, has again managed to wet through her pull up on to my comforter, and has dripped pink hair dye all over husbands pillow (well, that one at least only marginally affects me)

So I sneak out of bed trying not to wake her and proceed to sniff every piece of laundry on my floor hoping to find something that doesn't stink of either me, or the dog...no such luck.

Now I have to make my way out to the living room, naked, to sort through the ever growing pile of clothes I haven’t had time to fold. The thing you have to know about our living room, is that it offers absolutely NO privacy, with a giant picture window facing the street, and a city bus stop directly in front of my house, the man waving at me from the street only confirms what I have always suspected, everyone in this town has seen me naked.

Now, you may ask yourself, "Amy, why didn't you put on a robe? or wrap in a towel?" to which I would say, “Well blogging community, I don't own a robe, and all my towels are dirty because I hate laundry, that, and at 6am, all I can think about is, "Holy shit, that lazy ass didn't change the light bulbs again did he, remind me to kill him...Oooh pants! OW couch…"

Because the couch laundry pile has yielded positive results, clean pants that basically fit and a shirt that is somewhat appropriate for the early fall, I can’t tell if they match yet but I don’t have time to be picky, it is now time to release the hound.

The pugglet tears through the bathroom door at lightening speed, nearly toppling me in the process, I open the back door and she proceeds to bark at anything with a shadow and go to her super secret pooping spot because she can't be seen while pooping.The problem with this is that I know one day our land lord will show up, find nothing of the carefully hidden dog paraphernalia and then miraculously find a years worth of dog shit hidden behind a vault of some kind that she has erected and evict us for have a pet we aren't supposed to have.

So, while the pugglet sniffs and hides the pass code to her crap vault, I catch a glimpse of myself in a nearby mirror, now that I'm dressed, I realize that my hair is limp and somewhat greasy, checking the clock I see that it is far too late for a shower so extra deodorant and some mousse will have to cover my forgetfulness. Make up is, of course out, because I own only one tube of mascara, and a thing of pink eye shadow my sister talked me into buying and nothing to apply either, so, its another day of hearing, "Oh my, you look tired!" and "Are you feeling okay?" from the girls at the office.

With my hair somewhere between styled and tamed, and my odor contained I see that it’s now 7am and its time to wake the pink one. Pugglet follows me into my room and I start the morning song, my gentle wake up to her every morning; Booger, wake up, we gotta get moving! She starts to smile and shuts her eyes tight in definace...as Idgie lands on her face. So instead of a gentle wake up, we get a screaming fit that ends with Idgie the pugglet flying across the room.

She rises from the bed a tangled mess of pink hair, drool and Night Night, the ripped blue and green afghan my mother lovingly crafted prior to her birth. Unfortunately, my mother went a little overboard and Night Night is just about the right size for the newborn of a giant, rather than my little ball of baby, which allows her to effectively drown in Night Night with only her toes poking through the holes wiggling lightly.

She tells me her tummy hurts, she’s hungry, she doesn’t want to go to school, she needs to stretch and she hates me. And I remind her that it is now 7:05 and if she wants to make her own lunch its time to get up right now. She says simply “no”.

“isn’t the whole “I’m sick I don’t want to go to school” thing supposed to happen in junior high, or at the very earliest, elementary school?” Not my kid, she’s advanced.

I am eventually able to get her out of bed, this time I didn’t have to drag her, so that’s progress. I start throwing clothes at her as she vetos each outfit cast her way. “I don’t like jeans, dey awn’t comfowtable”, okay, how about a dress? “no, I want sweat pants.”

Nobody dreams of their kid being the sweatpants kid, you know the one. They always walk a little too fast to class, wear their backpacks, a little too high, speak in a voice that is just a little too whiny, as though she doesn’t have enough to deal with being the only one still trying to potty train, we are not adding sweat pants kid to the list of “idiosyncrasies” she has developed in her four short years.

“How about khakis? They feel like sweat pants”
“She grabs a pair of pink flowered pajama bottoms and a purple sweatshirt with a ballerina on the front. “Deese”

“lily, no, they don’t match and you are not wearing your pajama bottoms to school”
“Daddy wears them to work” she counters
“Well, Daddy is weird, put this on NOW or you don’t get lunch and you have to eat the school food.”

“FINE” she spits at me with a voice like venom, the sting running up my back and landing behind my eyes.

“LOSE THE TUDE KID” I yell back
“YOU TALK NICE MOM!” she retorts
“GET YOUR LITTLE BUTT INTO THOSE CLOTHES NOW BEFORE I SPANK YOUR ASS!”
Finally my tone sets her in motion and she scurries to the couch to put on the clothes she has reluctantly agreed to wear.

While she dresses I prepare the lunches and wait for her to enter the kitchen demanding to finish the sandwiches. I boil eggs for her breakfast and snack, cut up apples, spread peanut butter on to celery with raisins. I craft a nutritious and tasty lunch for my little daughter, all nicely fit together in her pink princess lunch box.

Once her clothes are on, she dissects the lunch box as I wrestle her hair into some semblance of order and shoes on her feet. She tells me how she hates or is in some way disgusted and sickened by each item in the lunch box. I let her finish up the sandwiches, smearing peanut butter on her pants from hers and over squirting mustard on mine. She smashes them together and licks her fingers, smiling at me and asking if she can have cookies for breakfast.

I managed to get my way out of that conversation without anymore threats or screeching and looking at the clock and see that it is now well past my 7:15 deadline and entering into the 7:30, “we better get our asses out the door” final deadline.

After grabbing Night Night, the lunchbox, my lunch bag, her back pack, and her shoes (which she has kicked off and is now refusing to wear) we pile into the car and head on our way. Now, in the early morning light, I see that my shirt and pants miraculously match, but realize that I forgot to brush my teeth, I will have to get some coffee to cover the smell of morning breath.

We make it to school, through the strange ritual of crawling on the ground speaking in her “kitty” voice which is high and somewhat whiny, while she demands the pink chair. I can’t help but wonder if the school will demand she be tested for some sort of learning disorder based on her obsession with cats and the color pink, but so far, they haven’t said much on the subject.

I pry her from my leg, rush out the door and jump in the car headed toward my office while inhaling from my morning cigarette, stopping only long enough to grab coffee and burn my tongue. Racing to the building I manage to make it in by 8, wondering how a 10 minute drive manages to take 45 minutes every morning, but, somehow it does.

Clocking in I start the rest of my daily routine; “looks at spreadsheets, says hrmmmmm”