SUNDAY NIGHT STRESS

To celebrate Gus’ recent and JV’s upcoming birthday, we just got back from a long weekend family trip to Disney World. To be honest, I had been dreading it for years and put it off for as long as I could. I had no interest in long lines, crowded masses, fast food and large cartoon like characters walking around being goofy. But to my great surprise, I really, really loved the experience and was surprised by the precision on how well run everything was. Granted, we took the kids out of school and didn’t go when the rest of America has their school breaks, so the lines weren’t long. It was really clean, we had perfect weather and it was so liberating to be to be running around carefree like a kid just playing and having fun. No jackets, nothing to carry, no schedules to adhere to. Just pure, carefree fun.


But as soon as we got to the airport, I started to stress and tense up. First of all, there were so many stranded Europeans who couldn’t get back home because of the volcano. Disney is not a bad place to be stranded, but it’s expensive and I felt badly for all those travelers to incur unexpected and additional expenses. I had to hand it to my boys – they were uncharacteristically well- behaved on the plane and we actually landed 45 minutes ahead of schedule. But as soon as we landed, my head started to dance with visions of all the things I had to do. As a working mamagirl, I have only two days of the weekends to cram in all my errands and to prepare for the week ahead. I didn’t have those two days this week, so I knew that I was going to be in the weeds. This was my mental to-do list:

• Fuck, I have no groceries or food in the wanking house – when am I going to get a chance to get food for the week?
• Crap, when am I going to get all the goddamn laundry done?
• Shit, I have to go through the kids’ backpacks and write checks for fieldtrips, sign homework sheets, take all the dates and transcribe them into my momAgenda and blackberry. Bollocks.
• Mothafucka, I see that Gus has a birthday party this week, I have to go and get a birthday present. And wrap it too.
• Bugger-me, I have to haul my bitch-ass out of bed one hour earlier each day this week to train for my upcoming half marathon.
• I am such a fuckwitt, I have no idea if it’s paper or plastic to the curb for recycling tonight.
• Who is the dipshit that scheduled JV for soccer and baseball practice this week on the same nights and how the hell am I going to get him to two places at the same time. What a clusterfuck.
• I wonder what kind of shitshow my desk is going to look like when I get back to work on Monday morning.
• Jeeeezzzz, I still have to pick up that fucking dog from the dogsitter’s house tonight. And duh, who is the shitferbrains who forgot to pick up dogfood?

The list in my head went on and on, but there really aren’t enough profane expletives to accompany each task, so I’ll stop right there. The only way I was going to get through this list and start checking things off was going to be by enlisting the help of my family. And so, I started to delegate. I gave JV a garbage bag and made him empty all bins and haul the bin to the curb. I gave Jackis the laundry bins and asked him to start filling up hampers and running some loads. And as for Gus? I debated whether or not he was too young to adequately complete a chore without mucking it up. I needed to keep him occupied and out of my hair while the rest of us tried to create some order in the household. So I sat him down with a pen and some stationery and asked him to make a birthday card for Megan’s upcoming 6th birthday. As he wrote and worked diligently and proudly on his newly learned kindergarten phonics, the rest of us worked on our chores. At the end, I wrapped the gift and asked Gus to hand me the card that he made.

 As you can see, I don’t know why I thought he was too young to do a chore. Clearly, by the adult verbiage he chose, he is more than ready for hard, manual labor.

Target flip flops