Man, It’s hard to be a mom right now.
As if the daily shaping of humans into upstanding citizens wasn’t enough…
As if the Jr. High clothing crises,
and seventh grade math homework,
and figuring out what foods they’ll all eat while actually sitting on their bottoms and still getting enough protein and fiber,
and emails to teachers,
and making sure you turned in
ALL OF THE FLIPPING FORMS wasn’t enough;
Coronavirus.
And not just Coronavirus by itself, either.
Coronavirus holding unwashed hands and skipping towards us with every mother of school-aged children’s other nemesis:
Daylight Savings Time.
Friends,
I hardly know which end is up right now.
Am I alone in this?
I, myself, am just coming off of numerous days of a terrible illness,
and now it seems I am emerging from my mole hole to a blinding world completely up on its end.
My husband, who works at Costco, came home the other day to report that his store had just sold completely out of Spam.
Spam.
If that doesn’t say apocalypse,
I don’t know what does.
People are losing their ever-loving minds.
I get the concerns, and I know that it is to be taken very seriously,
but right now I, personally, am less worried about how many cans of pressed and salted meat will fit on the shelf next to our suitcases than I am about how on earth I am supposed to get kids whom I still sometimes catch eating their boogers to wash their hands without me always being right beside them.
And for 20 whole seconds?
As if.
When my kids brush their teeth there are times that they spit afterwards and the toothpaste looks completely unchanged in the sink.
That’s how un-thoroughly these three do things.
I can still see the toothpaste stripe fully in-tact.
My 11 year old is 100% content to lay in a pile of dirty dishes, food wrappers, and old milk cups that are turning to yogurt before her very eyes.
Her room is like a science fair.
My now 8 year old once licked the entire length of the railing surrounding a zoo giraffe enclosure, and she did this BY CHOICE.
I do daycare in my home for a two and four year old.
My husband spends every day at one of the busiest Costco’s in our state.
This feels like a real sharp up-hill battle, you guys.
With such conflicting reports circulating about the need for concern over this virus,
I find myself going back and forth multiple times a day between extreme vigilance,
where I’m sanitizing things like the bobby pins I found in the crack of the couch and all our loose change,
and the thought that maybe all we need is to just spend a lot more of our time soaking in our hot tub with an extra dollop or two of chlorine.
My brain is on a loop.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Add to this that as I am trying to decide what actions to take, and what things to stock up on, and what events to go to or cancel,
here comes Daylight Saving’s Time with just a little extra level of difficulty because now I think I have TIME to make thoughtful decisions, but instead I’m like,
“This is fine…We’re doing fine…
Here we go…We’re in the groove…Everything is nice and eas….
OH MY GOSH HOW IS IT 8:30 ALREADY?! EVERYBODY RUN TO THE VAN! YOU CAN CRY THERE. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DON’T FORGET YOUR LUNCH! THE WORLD IS ON FIRE AND ALL HAIR IS BAD AND ALL THINGS ARE LOST AND THIS SHIP,
IT IS GOING DOWWWWWN!”
By the time you take four deep breaths to collect your thoughts these days time is up,
and even though you are sure it’s only 6:30 it’s really 9:00 and no one has even had dinner, and so guess what?
Now you are failing at virus containment AND time management.
I yearn for the simplicity of how things used to be right now.
Back before we all knew so much.
Before all this information was at our fingertips.
I remember when the most shocking thing you could see on TV was MTV’s The Real World.
Back when we would go out at daybreak and not come in until the sun went down.
Back when we would play in the creek without water rings or sunscreen or hats or glasses or those weird little water shoes from the drugstore.
We’d make soup from water in the creek that was, for all we know, a sewer run-off.
We threw rocks and actually ATE our mud pies.
I don’t think I washed my hands from 1986 until 1990.
I thought it was normal to get so much sun that you thought you’d throw up,
But now it’s even scary to go to the doctor’s office because of what you could catch while you are there.
Being an adult is a lot less fun than I thought it would be.
The other night the girls were off the hook, running circles around the house giggling and slap-fighting one another.
I told them that they had better not get hurt because we were not stepping foot in an ER right now just for some measly compound fracture.
I’ll YouTube fixing that puppy myself.
As a kid I can recall my rancher dad keeping vials of animal medication in our refrigerator that he would use on himself rather than go to the doctor.
He once got kicked in the shin by a horse, an injury that definitely required multiple stitches and a possible skin graft, but my dad just treated it by soaking daily in baths of hot bleach water.
Perhaps I was being prepared young for such a time as this.
You’re going to be crazy chasing each other around on the hardwood in socks, narrowly missing bashing your head on the fireplace?
Be prepared to be treated with whatever is leftover in the old pet medication box in the junk drawer, then,
because the ER is dead to us.
In the end I guess the best choice to make is to keep doing what I’ve done every day that I have been a mom:
Just do the next thing.
Even if I feel afraid and unsure.
Take each thing as it comes.
Prepare as much as I can, all the while knowing that there are so many things in this life that we simply cannot prepare ourselves for,
and that’s no reason to stop living.
Now, if you’ll excuse me,
I need to go tell my kids to wash their hands again because,
good grief,
I thought it was only 3:30 but it’s actually almost time for dinner.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
