My family has a very full schedule. Like any parent I know, we suffer from the first-world problem of too much to do, too little time. I’m regularly looking for a few extra hours in each day, to catch up on one thing or another. Really, it’s a blessing to have the opportunities we have and I am truly thankful for every sunrise and sunset that I am still breathing. But sometimes, I do give into the self-pity, just enough to think, “a little help maybe?”
The Saturday mornings of my youth are long gone. There are no more loud and poorly animated cartoons, no plastic bowls of artificially colored and flavored cereals, no sleeping until you woke up, well-rested and directionless. Now, our alarm runs six days a week. With a giddy pleasure that seems both impossible and totally expected of a machine, it performs its job with a screeching consistency. And it is jarring. The Saturday alarm is the saddest of them all. I am often awoken from a deep sleep, briefly startled and completely confused as to why I am being yelled at. I quickly hit snooze and then, as realization settles in and my overachiever propensity flies right back into my face, I actually sigh.
These weekend commitments are not even my own. I have foisted my innate desire to get things out of the way early, onto my unsuspecting children. We always accept the first class, the earliest appointment, the crack-of-dawn lesson. So by 7 a.m., every Saturday, at least one of us adults is in the chauffeur seat. And let’s be honest, it’s usually me. Not because my husband doesn’t offer, because he does. But first off, an offer after I’m up, dressed and coffee-ed up is not really an offer. It just gives you the bragging rights to an offer. This way, when you want to nap later in the day and I look at you with incredulity because you slept hours more than me, you can say things like, “That’s your own fault. I offered to drive.”
Second, even if the offer is legit, unless it’s one of the days that both children have to be somewhere and I have no choice, I’m going to turn it down. The reasons are many but we can start with the fact that I will be awake anyway, so why bother? There is no way that I am physically capable of sleeping when he is up and trying to get a child out of the house. Between the lights that will be turned on (all of the lights will be turned on), the questions I will field (Have you seen my jacket? Yes, it’s on the back of the chair, where you left it. Because the dining room chair makes a much better coat closet than the coat closet), and the loud banging of pans, drawers and cabinets coming from the kitchen (because we are required by law to feed and water the child), there’s no hope for extra shut-eye.
I’d just lie there wondering if anyone had remembered the water bottle. Did they check to make sure the dance bag is in the car (and not the car that will stay in the driveway)? Are they keeping an eye on the clock so they’re not late? And will someone please feed the cats? Seriously, how can you be oblivious to all of that freaking yelling? Clearly, they are starving to death and we are all going to die with them.
So I get up. I’m happy that we are fortunate enough to be able to allow our children the extra-curricular enrichment. I’m also happy that coffee comes in five pounds bags. Sometimes, I think about just eating the beans. Seems more efficient.
For the most part, I’ve got a system. I get up, start the coffee, get myself pulled together into some form of socially acceptable attire, check to see if the coffee is ready (it’s not), start making breakfast for the child, check to see if the coffee is ready (because junkie-me is starting to get a little panicky. Soon, withdrawal will set in and I will become confused and angry) and then retrieve the child from bed.
Once the elixir of life is flowing through my veins, bringing me joy and filling me with unbound determination, I turn my attention to the regular household chores. If I haven’t already fed the cats to end the persistent, forlorn, near-hysterical yelling, they get first priority. Though each one of them is clearly well fed (weighing in at double digits), it seems they are constantly in danger of meeting their demise due to lack of food. We’ve actually resorted to keeping bricks on top of the dog food bin because they figured out how to open it. On more than one occasion, I have found a rotund feline, in the throes of a food coma, belly up in a sea of dog kibble. They don’t even feel bad. I am simply given a stern glare, indicating that I have interrupted their Romanesque feast and will pay for my insolence at a later date, as they slowly drag themselves out of the bin and waddle away. No shame.
Once the beasts have been sated (and just the cats. Two out of three dogs refuse to get up at this early hour. I tried a couple of times to feed them, even bringing full bowls to them, while they lay curled up in fluffy, over-sized beds. One will open a single eye, look from me to the bowl, then back to me, and actually close his freaking eye — slowly, without breaking eye contact. The other one turns his head away. Clearly, I have offended him with the mere suggestion of food), I move on to the other tasks at hand. There are dishes to do, wood stoves to manage and a child to prod into action. We’ve been living this life for years now so it’s a pretty smooth ride. Unless you hit a speed bump.
The speed bump is a husband whose sporadic participation in the ritual leaves him big and lumpy, and right in front of the well-oiled machine that is my routine. Last weekend, I was brought to a painful halt, as I stumbled over his ineffectiveness. It was pre-caffeination, a dangerous and primitive time. While emptying the dishwasher, I noticed him standing stock still, the coffee pot a hostage in his frozen arms.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You’re just standing there. And you have the coffee pot. Which is slowing the coffee process. We never slow the coffee process. It’s a bad idea.”
He looked down at his hands, carelessly holding my sanity in his grip, surprised to see it there, “I think I’m not awake yet.”
“OF COURSE YOU’RE NOT AWAKE YET! YOU’RE HOLDING THE ONLY THING THAT WILL GET US THERE AND ALSO KEEP ME FROM KILLING ALL OF YOU! GIVE ME THE FREAKING POT!”
I wrestled it from his feckless hands, leaving him to finish with the dishes, then scurried through the rest of the morning’s tasks. While I got dressed, made the bed, prepared breakfast, cleaned out the wood stove and started a fire, he managed to pull on his pants. It was like watching a sloth on quaaludes.
But somehow, he makes it out of the house. He gets the kids where they need to be and brings them back home alive — happy, even. While he’s away from me, he is charming and funny. He is engaging and helpful. The early morning drugged sloth is gone, replaced with some guy who claims to be my husband. WTF?
I’d like to say that behind every great man is a great woman, providing support and friendship, pushing him to be the best that he can be. But I think it’s just the copious amounts of coffee that we chug like camels at an oasis. Hey, something has to get us out of the house. At least it’s legal.
We’ve recently become converts to the French press. It really does make a better cup of coffee. Follow these directions from Crema.co for a fantastic cup of liquid energy.
[divider]
Laurie Nigro, is the mother of two biological children and one husband. She also takes care of a menagerie of animals that leave throw-up around for her to step in in the middle of the night. Laurie’s passionate about frugal, natural living, which is a nice way of saying she’s a kombucha-brewing, incense-burning, foodie freak who tries really hard not to spend money on crap made by child laborers. You can hear her rant about her muse (aka husband) and other things that have no bearing on your life, in this space each Sunday.
Write to Laurie:
[contact-form-7 id=”27986″ title=”Write to Laurie”]
