Comic Relief

It's been one of "those" mornings. On Friday mornings I tend to pay the price for working late on Thursdays. I get home just in time Thursday nights to get both the kids to bed. The house is typically a major wreck by then, and I'm just too tired to clean it up. When I get up on Friday morning, it's go go go again with the kids. In addition to the regular "Mommy race," dinner dishes are still dirty and I have to carve out a clean patch of counter to prepare the kids' breakfasts (and then there are dirty dinner dishes AND dirty breakfast dishes to contend with), laundry is half done, toys are everywhere, and there's a funky stink lingering about the house.

Today has been a Friday morning no different from any other. After getting Dear Daughter dressed and ready for breakfast, we did the typical struggle where she does not want to sit by herself at the table in case there's an ant in that corner of the room. We've had an ant revival the past several weeks. It's a problem we fixed a couple years ago and haven't had problems again. Until recently. As I've already mentioned, Dear Daughter has a "bug-o-phobia." It's bad. She's even terrified of miniscule ants. So she did her usual routine of clinging to my leg, avoiding eating her breakfast, and refusing to sit at the table by herself.

Meanwhile, I needed to get Dear Son's oatmeal prepared, and had to carve out another couple of square inches on countertop to do so. Then I found myelf feeding a bite here and there to Dear Son in between refilling Dear Daughter's cereal bowl and re-assuring her that the ants are gone (which they thankfully are now even though Dear Daughter isn't sure she believes it). Then Dear Son gets fussy and he is ready for his first nap of the morning, but he has to sit and fuss while we wait for the Princess to finish her third bowl of cereal because she will come unglued if left alone at the table (an ant might "get her"). When Princess finally finishes we can take Dear Son upstairs to nap. First though, Dear Daughter runs to the living room while I unbuckle Dear Son from his bouncy chair. I hear her voice call from the other room, "Oh no! Cat poop!" That typically means cat barf, not actually poop. I was praying for the former if I couldn't escape them both. Sure enough, the geriatric cat was leaving his barf mark on the freshly cleaned carpets that I busted my tail cleaning a couple weeks ago.

While putting Dear Son down for his nap, Dear Daughter begins her non-stop broken-record chattering about wanting to watch her Little People show. She wanted a specific one, which I promised her she could watch after I got Dear Son down for his nap. Only when I finally went to put it on for her, I couldn't find it. We finally settled on a different one, and I returned to the mess and funky stink in the kitchen. Then to the geriatric cat barf. When that was caught up, there was the next crisis: a clogged toilet. Forturnately Dear Daughter was sitting rather contently watching her show while I scrambled about cleaning up messes and putting out fires. As I passed through the living room, I told Dear Daughter I was going to the garage to get the toilet punger and unclog the toilet. She looked up at me with shiny eyes and a beaming grin and replied, "Okay, Mommy! Have a good time!"

Thank God for comic relief on mornings like this!