School has started and I’m about to lose my damn mind. It’s not like this is a surprise or anything. I’ve been doing the school year mom spaz-out for the last seven years with two in school for the past three. I’ve worked either full or part-time for all but one of those seven years so I’m not a noob, yet somehow, after a summer of lounging on the beach and sipping afternoon spritzers, I always manage to develop a case of amnesia regarding the level of suckage that occurs when school returns. At present, I’m three weeks in and already feel like I am being pummeled by a heavyweight champ from 5:00am to 9:00pm every single day.
When the alarm sounds at 4:45 my mind instantly fills with profanity. I am a morning person but 4:45 isn’t morning. It’s like morning eve, not quite night and not quite morning. It’s a limbo time when I should not be awake. From the moment I jump over the cat and begin the morning routine it’s a sprint. Number 1 now gets on the bus an hour earlier than his brother so that means any chance of alone time is gone unless I get up at 3:45. (To that I say, no. Just no.) It’s better to be a stressed-out nut-job all day than rise two hours prior to the butt-crack-of-dawn. The marathon from getting one on the bus and the other to before-school care before racing to work leaves me as breathless as when I was a fat kid in gym class struggling through the Presidential Fitness Tests (Thanks Regan. Like Reganomics and Just Say No that was another plan that didn’t work out in the long run but I digress with my liberal tendencies.) After that 2.5 hour sprint it’s time to work a full day with smelly, surly middle schoolers before the afternoon shift of laundry, homework, dinner and running back and forth to the various lessons, practices, appointments and meetings my children deem important to their young lives.
At 6:00 when the Turk arrives home from his quiet train ride back from the city after a grizzling day punching computer keys behind his desk in a climate controlled office that likely does not smell of a sweat-sock and puberty cocktail, he mutters, “Wow, I am tired.” To which I respond by placing all sharp objects from my reach because the urge to cut a bitch is real. But this is the reality of most working moms and it sucks. Occasionally add in taking on a burly football coach, panic over a hearing aid that goes missing, a burst of adolescent emotions or a forgotten homework assignment and it’s amazing so many children actually make it to adulthood. It’s also understandable why mothers have cornered the market on wine consumption.
The thing is, no one warns you when you’re sniffing your tiny baby’s head fresh from the hospital that motherhood will so quickly turn into a crap-storm and that baby smell will be a distant memory like your perky boobs and waistline. All too quickly you will go from swaddling a gorgeous bambino to wrestling sweat-soaked sports gear from your offsping while trying not to inhale a bodily stench comparable to a decomposing bovine. (I grew up on a farm. I know this stench.)
There is one positive in the hot mess existence this year though. For the first time ever I share a school with one of my babies. Number 1 son is now a full-on middle schooler which means that along with all the horrors that come with middle school (PS I’ve been in middle school for 20 years and it is still just as bad as when you were there.) he has the added joy of running into his mommy in the halls and lunchroom. Occasionally I can’t resist the urge to pinch his little cheeks and blow him a kiss from the hallway as I take the job of SMother to the next level. It’s comforting to know he’s in the same building and while I thought he might disown me, he’s actually enjoying it too. Likely because not only do I SMother him, I SMother his friends too. We also get a full hour together sans Nugget due to stepped dismissal times and that has been absolutely amazing. Sharing a school with your kid takes mom control to a new level and it’s AWESOME.
Thankfully in all this madness, my husband the Turk has offered to help lighten my load, “Since you are very busy, I can feed cat so you not have to worry.”
Yes, he is swooping in to take the pain of cracking open a can of Tender Viddles and dumping it into a cat bowl each day off my to do list. Thank God! I could’ve never done that on my own!
Here to you, moms. Hang in there. Christmas break is only 97 days away.
Laughter Is Better Than Prozac 