Morning Mayhem

It's not an ordinary evening. I'm blasting "Do you want crying" (Katrina and the Waves) and dancing crazily for the benefit of my extremely-fussy, 'oh-my-land cut the tooth already' infant. It's only appropriate. She's smiling. I am, too.

The day didn't start with smiling.

Try as I might to get this precious kindergartener out the door on time, she manages to drop a woozy right before we leave almost every day.

"Mom, I can't find my glasses."

"Mom, I didn't want to wear my ponytail anymore" she tells me as her hair (still in the general shape of a pony tail, mind you) has a large, gentle kink in the middle of it.

My personal favorite:
"Mom, this doesn't fit, this doesn't fit, this doesn't fit..." followed by a child trying to clothe herself while she writhes on the floor. Outrageous.

Serenity, I say to myself.

"SERENITY, " I scream out loud.
That's right.
I scream.
I seem to be the only bloggy mother who struggles with an anger problem.
I scream. Totally frustrated.

I hate when I scream. I do everything in my power to not let the awful volcano rising up the back of my spine explode into my daughter's face. But I did. I screamed. "Where are your glasses? Why don't you have your glasses?" I ask her a bevy of questions to which I already know the answer: "I don't know," she cries.

So the morning started badly.

And then I went to the mechanic expecting to dread every minute in the dirty waiting area but... I didn't. I had a very nice conversation for a half hour with a real down-to-earth lady. My, that was nice. So nice. She was a mother of three (now grown).

Feeling really impressed with this woman, I asked her, "So how did you raise three young children and maintain your sanity? Did you have any little luxuries?" I expected some real age-old advice. A little nugget of truth.

Here's the essence of what she said, "I didn't know what I was doing. Just get up every day and do what you need to do."

That's it? She could be an ad for Nike.

She added, "I read the kids a lot of books. There would be days where one would be sick and fussy and another would be crying. We just read books."

I sat there on that rainy day and thought, "You know, she may not have said anything special, but she did acknowledge that being a stay-at-homie is a crap shoot. You just do what you need to do each day whether you feel like it or not, hope you're doing the right thing in God's eyes and one day they grow up."

I'm home again now. The world isn't more sparkly like they show in the Dis*ney movies after someone has a revelation. But it's doable.

There are "do-overs" on the horizon.

There's always Katrina and the Waves.

And for today's mistakes, there's forgiveness.