Today I told him, “There ain’t one dummy in this family! You Will NOT BE THE FIRST!”

Mamahood is hard. It’s an ever vigilant watch over every detail of someone else’s life.

Somedays I feel like a CEO in full possession of my team and lair. I delegate and shit gets done. On time. The right way. The first time.  To say days like that are rare would be a gross underestimate.

Most of the time, it’s a circus. I have no idea if I’m the ringmaster, the tight rope walker, or the clown. All I know is these are in fact my monkeys. This is in fact my circus. So I best keep the shit on the floor to a minimum and make sure the music changes promptly with each act.

 

Every second of every day, I feel like I am on the brink of failure running the circus that is my household. And I don’t mean falling down the stairs while watching a prized birthday cake tumble to the ground failure.

Oh no. That shits for amateurs.

I’m talking who let the lions loose during the crowd pleasing ‘let’s grab volunteers from the audience’ oops the flame thrower just dropped a torch and burned the tightrope he was walking kind of failure.

 

I have walking nightmares about it. Did I leave the stove on? Is there dog food? Am I making lunch tomorrow? When’s that project due? What do you mean you don’t have any clean pants to wear? Type of despair.

My greatest accomplishments this week as a parent include:

1. Getting 2 loads of laundry clean (not fluffed, not folded, hell one load is still in the dryer as I write this)
2. Preparing a pot of soup he actually ate (read as he ate all the sausage slices out and dipped his crescent roll in the broth)
3. Buying new shoes for his size 8 feet (he’s 8; but I didn’t cry in the shoe store which is HUGE because I ALWAYS cry in the shoe store; his feet grow a complete half to whole size every 90 days)
4. Getting the sink full of dishes washed (minus the glop that congealed on the bottom of the toaster oven tray)

And it’s Thursday.

 

I know there are moms out there who are like, “You have clean clothes!” And there are others who are like, “Where the crescent rolls gluten free?” The thing is I used to be more of the later. There was a time in my life, not so long ago, when I lived a completely organized life.

Seriously.

My book shelves were dusted. My dog had a groomer named Ashley (she was sweet). There were tulips blooming in my yard each spring. A neighbor once rung my doorbell to compliment me on them. And I was on a first named basis with MY dry cleaner.

Now…

I have to fight my dog to take a bath. And it’s a hairy fight. He’s old, cantankerous and perfectly content living in his filth. He won’t let anyone else near him with a brush or water.

I’ve started to name the dust bunnies in my house. A few are larger than a gerbil.

My tulips are all dead. Suffocated by a ground covering I bought for no damn good reason.

And the dry cleaner couldn’t pick me out of a line up.

But…

I can tell from the first intake of breath if my son’s cough is ‘just a cough’ or an asthmatic episode coming on.

I know the difference between dab step and the nay nay.

I can speak minecraft.

My dog has his spot in the corner of the living room under the lamp next to the bookshelf. When he settles his old bones down he sighs and I know it’s a 30 second countdown before he snores.

My life is a circus. It’s a red hot glorious mess complete with animals, death defying tricks, and aerobatics. There are about 15,000,000 things around here I’d love to be able to fix tomorrow but all the inhabitants seem happy.

Which I suppose is me #winning.