The laundry. I need to switch the stuff from the washing machine and put it in the dryer. It should only take a minute.
I walk towards the laundry room. I pass the bathroom. I see the hand towel on the floor. Ugh, I need to get a new towel in there.
I detour to the towel cabinet and grab a clean towel. I pass through the playroom. What’s that on the floor? With the baby crawling around, I’m constantly doing a quick scan wherever I go. I grab the unidentified object and stop in my son’s room and put it on his desk; I believe it’s his. I see his hamper overflowing.
Oh right, I was on the way to switch the laundry; perfect, I’ll take this with me.
I grab the basket and notice the towel on my shoulder. The bathroom-let me get this towel there. I stop at the bathroom and leave the laundry basket at the door. Put up the new towel. I see there’s not much toilet paper left. Let me run to the garage and restock the toilet paper.
I hop into the garage and notice two bags of groceries left out there, grab them and bring them to the kitchen and put the perishables in the refrigerator. What’s that bowl of I-don’t-know-what color stuff in there? It’s certainly overstayed its invite, time to dump.
I hear a voice from somewhere in the kitchen, “Get me down! I’m stuck!”
How did he get up there?
In this house full of boys, I usually enforce the rule of if you climbed up there, you figure out how to get down from there. But this once I break my rule and help him down, I think even he can’t figure out how he got up there!
Right, the toilet paper. I stack toilet paper in the toilet paper stacker thing and head in the direction of the laundry room, not remembering what I want to do there but knowing that that’s where I was heading.
I pass the hallway closet, and stop. I stand very still. Sure enough, I hear muffled voices. Before opening the door, I already know what’s going on in there.
“Guys, give me my phone.”
I know I’m breaking up quite the party with my 4 and 3 yr old sitting huddled deep in the closet, posting on Facebook and Whatsapp things that don’t belong there. I reclaim my phone, one of the few things in the house I call MINE.
It needs to be charged so I dash to the kitchen and plug it in, where it had been before it was swiped. I leave it in a corner of the counter, strategically hiding it behind the roll of paper towels.
And I notice the baby monitor; it’s making strange noises. I can’t help but smile and scowl at the same time; my kids are obsessed with putting it on the “popcorn channel” as they call it. Y’know that horrible sound you get when the two channels aren’t lined up? Well, they insist it’s the baby making popcorn in his crib. I switch it to channel B and sure enough, baby is up from his nap. I sneak into my room to go get him without my entourage.
I change him, give him lunch, clean him up, settle him to play. Uh oh dinner, the rest of the kids will be home soon. Where did the day go? I better keep my golden supper schedule…not that it guarantees they’ll eat it, but at least I have what to defend myself with. “You guys helped me make this meal plan, remember!?”
Kids are all home. It’s the time of day I feel like I’m on the conveyor belt at the grocery store, it just keeps moving and I can’t keep up! Plates, forks, napkins, spills. Clean up and mores spills. Someone pushed someone’s something somewhere, I’m not quite sure of the details but it wasn’t me!
Crash..ice cubes dance across the kitchen floor, what is with those ice machine on the front of the freezer door!! I wonder if somewhere there’s a little sticker that says ages 12+, maybe I missed it.
And then it happened. It was time to get in pajamas. First one little voice, then two, then three. “Mommy, I don’t have any pajamas in my drawer!”
And it hits me. The washing machine. The dryer.
And I stride purposefully to the laundry room to switch the wet load to the dryer. I pass my son’s laundry basket waiting so patiently outside the bathroom and take it with me.
You know us moms; we’re wonderwoman. We just know how to get things done. And we still think that it’ll only take a minute.
Little Yellow Notepad 