Blog challenge prompt is to write a “how-to”. Looks like it’s time to dust off a draft I started back when my kids were much younger–

We all have those things we want to happen.  Like NOW.  Or even better, those things we really don’t want happening EVER.  Well, there are two acts that guarantee setting things in motion. 

1. Start cleaning.

Want your kids to come home after a long day out mudding, sledding, or otherwise wreaking mayhem on the environment?  Calling them won’t work.  Texting them won’t work.  But put a mop to the floor and suddenly you have the entire pre-teen neighborhood stampeding through your house.  Will it happen as you fill the bucket, so you don’t have to commence scrubbing until after the last shoe print has marred the entryway?  Ha.  You won’t see the whites of their eyes until you have swept, mopped, and dried the floor to a masterpiece of shine.  You won’t even see the whites of their eyes then–you’ll see the muddy tracks on the floor.

2. Start baking.

You’ve waited all day for that return call between 2 and 4 PM so you can land a great insurance rate.  2 PM.  3 PM.  3:45 PM.  4 PM.  4:15 PM. 4:48 PM.  Watched pots don’t boil, and watched clocks don’t make the phone ring.  Kids are sprawled across the house in various stages of death by starvation, so you wave the white flag of surrender and dig in to mixing up a big ol’ batch of meatloaf.  You get your hands covered in the pink slime of hamburger, bread crumbs, eggs, and various seasonings, massaging the goo as if lives depended on it, when—RIIIIIIINGGGG! Motherf***ingd***sucking***wagon&%&*%#…

Little Jimmy needs 2 dozen cookies by 3:30 PM for the football team bake sale, but the dishwasher repairman is supposed to arrive between 1 and 2 PM.  Do you start the cookies at 12:30 PM so they are done before the repairman shows up, so you aren’t tripping over his prone carcass as you watch the oven?  Do you count on him to be done by 2:30 PM, so you can pop the cookies in the oven and deliver them all warm and delicious?  Everyone likes warm and delicious.  So the clock watching begins. 12:50 PM. 1:00 PM.  1:30 PM.  1:45 PM.  2:00 PM.  Bake sales wait for no one, so you throw those bad boys in the oven.  Just as the timer goes off, the doorbell rings.  You answer the door to let the repairman in, and return to the cookies–a little extra dark on the bottoms.  Every second counts, people.

People wonder why moms are so stressed on a daily basis.  They are constantly determining how to execute multiple tasks with precision timing.  Every part of the household has to be accounted for when seeing that something gets done.  Laundry, bath time, bed time, meal prep, meal serving, appointments, events, pet care, phone calls–all of it has to be balanced or absolute chaos erupts. 

I spend a lot of time in chaos.

Now I’m going to go burn some cookies and miss a few phone calls. 

Cheers.