Life Keeps Me Real

Sometimes I feel like a slave. 

I pick up countless mountains of toys and wonder why I don't just box them all up and drop them off at the nearest goodwill. I pick up dirty socks and diapers, and make beds, and wipe bums. I cook food that somehow ends up on every little shirt sleeve, smeared onto walls, stuck on carpets, and if I'm lucky ends up in a few picky tummies. 

I try to calm tired cranky 3-year olds until they finally succumb to a nap.

I drop off or pick up children, enduring mannerless other parents, and the loud-speaker lady who always insists on blaring out each child's name as their parents pull up, as though they won't recognize their own child otherwise. I drive back home and pull resistant children from car seats who have now decided they actually do want to be in them.

I exhaustedly close the door behind me, set the squirming baby on the floor to toddle after his brothers who begin their ritual of turning the living room into a couch cushion war zone, and survey the messes that still await my attention. I clean up sinks and floors that appear to be designed as perfect breeding grounds to mass-produce dirty dishes, dirty clothes, and half chewed bits of food. 

Energetic little boys race in circles around me, yelling at the top of their lungs to call attention to the fact that they're surely going to be murdered by their brother any second if I don't intervene and confiscate the lego gun that will surely blast them to smithereens. 

The baskets of clean laundry sit pitifully neglected along the dining room wall, along my bedroom wall, and fill the shelves in the laundry room, as I empty the dryer and add a fresh load to their peaks. The baby is putting someone's dirty breakfast spoon in his mouth and then banging it on the dining bench, giggling adorably about it. I've suddenly got one of those funny blood sugar headaches that make me want to just pass out in a dark room.

The back yard's a mess, the grass needs to be mowed but it won’t stop raining, the bath tub drain is clogged, there is blueberry on the carpet. Someone needs a kiss, a bandaid, a dart retrieved from somewhere up high, or help with homework, a signature.

When bedtime rolls around, I sometimes feel clumsy with fatigue, my eyes are ready to fall back inside my head, I can't recall simple words that I've known since I was 3, and it takes energy just to lift my arms for bedtime hugs.
There is so much to this job. The majority of this blog attests to the fact that I am ordinarily up for the challenge. But sometimes I wish there were a Mommy for this mommy, to let me sleep for about 3 days. 

So right now I'll take a breather and just sit and stare at these :