Welcome to Mad Mondays, where we can air our pet peeves, complaints, and gripes. Basically, Mad Mondays will be a bitch fest but in the humorous sense, not in the whiny, chip on my shoulder sense. Please add your own gripes, complaints and pet peeves in the comment section. We know you have some, you can tell us. After all, nobody ever said TGIM!
When I was a kid my favorite story was Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good, Very Bad Day, now a major motion picture. Your welcome for the free advertisement, Steve Carell. As a kid, I thought the book was really funny and I couldn't get enough of it. I mean, who goes to sleep chewing gum? Of course the next day won't start out well, and we all know what happens when a day starts off in the crapper. As an adult I don't find this book funny, but more of a sad memoir much like If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and all of the torturous books that came after that. I actually wrote a post about that on my Paychecks to Pacifiers blog which I haven't updated in forever. Your welcome for the advertisement, Self.
You know those days where shit just hits the fan and then keeps hitting it until your entire day is just a shit storm that you can't escape? Sorry, Mom, no other word would do it justice. Anything goes on Mad Mondays. Anyway, we have all had more of these days then we care to recall and sometimes all you can do is trudge through until bed and start over again the next day.
My day didn't start out so terrible. It was Sunday, a day of rest according to priests who have no children. Sorry, that was rude. This was also my husband's first day off work since the previous weekend, which was good considering we woke up to a blizzard. An actual blizzard, the fifth worst blizzard in Chicago history, the fourth being the one that took place inside my house on this fine day. We were completely snowed in which meant we were not only missing church but also a super bowl party. Oh well, in my pajamas I stayed and I took this opportunity to make banana nut pancakes and bacon, which were pretty good if I do say so myself. The kids loved them and my husband wouldn't try them because he caught me sneaking K-A-L-E into the batter. I swear, you couldn't even taste it. If I had just cleaned the kitchen and gone back to bed this would have been a pretty successful day, Instead I cleaned the kitchen while my husband worked on his computer constructing our budget, my two year old tried to do stunts involving the train table and couch, and my five year old followed me around the kitchen asking if I could play with him now? How about now? How about NOW! For those of you jer- I mean lovely people like Jan who live in Sunny California or somewhere equally not frozen, let me tell you a little something about being stuck inside a house with kids. It is like being handed the role of cruise director except you don't get paid and your guests are caged animals with the attention span of goldfish. Also, your assistant director won't get off the computer.
After building with blocks for awhile the kids were hungry. Wait, didn't I just feed them? So I made my five year old a peanut butter and banana sandwich since I was out of jelly and I couldn't go to the store because of the whole sixteen inches of snow thing. Since I am not only a cruise director but also a short order cook, I made a hot dog for my very un-American two year old who won't eat peanut butter because it is too sticky. Seeing this, the five year old suddenly wanted a hot dog instead of the sandwich he had ordered. Luckily his brother shared some because the kitchen was closed.
After lunch we played a riveting game in which the boys crawl around on the floor and bark pretending to be dogs and I have to rescue them from the snow only for them to run away again so I can rescue them again and so on and so forth. Dog people, don't take this the wrong way because I am nothing if not an animal lover, but you know how dogs can be kind of annoying sometimes and kids can be kind of annoying sometimes? Kids who are playing the part of dogs aren't like that at all. Somehow this game morphed into a game of using a cardboard box to slide off the couch. At this point I decided to call nap time since we would have needed a snow mobile to get to the ER. My two year old protested nap time loudly and spent the next half hour in his crib screaming, "No Night night! I want SLIDE!!!!!" before finally falling asleep. Meanwhile, I tossed some buffalo wings in the slow cooker since we couldn't make our scheduled super bowl party because of the whole sixteen inches of snow situation. My five year old wanted to know if I could play with him now? How about NOW? My husband scrutinized a Microsoft excel spreadsheet that apparently showed I was spending an exorbitant amount on groceries. Um, hello? I am always cooking and these people are always eating!
My son and I moved on to an imaginative game of carnival which result in him melting down because of my inability to build a roller coaster in the family room since this was suddenly "his dream". The kid has a future in drama. For a smart kid, I sometimes wonder about his logic. This somehow transformed into a melt down about the fact that we couldn't go to the "bowl party" and a monologue about his plan to "fire the weather boss". Caged animals. When this particular storm had passed we resumed our dog game except in this version I had to adopt him from the shelter and take him to my home where he would promptly run away and so on and so forth. My husband promised to be off the computer in five minutes. My two year old woke up in a difficult mood and then proceeded to have explosive diarrhea. The hazmat team couldn't get to us on account of the whole sixteen inches of snow thing, so I yelled at my husband to get me a plastic bag and some disinfectant. My two year old got an impromptu bath. After the bathroom and surrounding ares had been thoroughly scoured, I began sorting laundry but was interrupted because the boys were hungry. See what I mean? I made chicken nuggets, veggies, and avocado fries as well as some grilled peppers to go with our wings. My five year old said his tummy "didn't feel like chicken nuggets". Seriously, who are these kids? I informed him that that was what was being served and he could choose to eat it or not. Meltdown. After dinner the kitchen looked like the blizzard had hit inside (which I suppose it had in a sense). I cleaned the kitchen and directed the boys to clean up the toys. My husband helped while trying to get the game on. Unfortunately, our Dish receiver has been overheating, making the watching of television for longer than twenty minutes a fire hazard, which is not much different than the usual television watching experience when you have young kids. Two hours later I had the kitchen cleaned, floor swept and mopped, toys picked up, and laundry switched over, I snuck onto Facebook for a glance at the pictures of the super bowl party taking place in a parallel universe. Oh well, I was just happy to have the house clean. Now to wash my hands and get the kids to bed so I can relax and not watch TV. A strange thing happened when I turned on the bathroom faucet. Water began flowing out of the vanity and over flowing into the kitchen and onto my freshly mopped floors. I yelled at my husband to get me some towels while I began removing all the flooded crap from underneath the sink and practically begged my footed pajama clad two year old to stay out of the water. My five year old helped by putting his toy cones up at the bathroom entrance. It turned out the pipe had come loose. I tightened the pipe, dried and cleaned everything, and moved on with my evening. My husband read to the boys.I dealt with another blow out diaper. When they were finally in bed my five year old complained of a tummy ache so I gave him some pepto and water and then took a shower because I was still wearing my pajamas from the night before. Shut up, it's not like we were going anywhere. By the time I was done in the shower and wearing clean pajamas (see, I have standards, people) the boys were asleep. I breathed a sigh of relief that this day was coming to a close, finished the laundry and then decided to sit down until I heard the suspicious sound of water flowing. How many frazzled moms does it take to tighten a pipe? After repeating the drying, cleaning up, and tightening steps from an hour earlier I got smart and put a bucket under the faulty pipe. Once I changed my wet pajama pants I gratefully crashed on the couch. Three point five seconds later my two year old began crying. My body appeared to be glued to the couch, so my husband kindly tried to get him back to sleep. When I finally got tired of listening to screams of, "No! I want see Mama!!!!" I trudged up the stairs and crashed on the floor of my two year old's room. It's nice to be wanted, right? I finally began to drift into an exhausted sleep, grateful that the terrible, horrible no good very bad day was over...
Suddenly the door opened and light spilled in from the hallway. Was it an angel coming to take me to my heavenly reward. No, it was my husband. Remember, I missed church that day.
"Aiden threw up," he announced. "What should I do?"
Talk about a rude awakening. I gave him my expert instructions on how to handle a vomit situation and to his credit he took care of it, sheets, a midnight bath, and all. At this point I found it difficult to fall back to sleep because not only was I on the floor but I was also panicking about the likelihood of a stomach virus ripping through the house. Now, I know nobody like stomach viruses but I have a full blown phobia. When someone throws up I feel like I am in an episode of The Walking Dead or Survivor. Who will be next? I was also feeling guilty because apparently his tummy really hadn't wanted chicken nuggets. In my defense, it was a boy who cried wolf situation. Finally, my exhaustion overtook my paranoia and I fell asleep about five point eight minutes before my husband shook me awake and asked if he should give Aiden any medicine. I informed him that I had given him pepto for all the good it had done, and asked him to please spray the entire house with Lysol. I gratefully made it into my own bed at two A.M. and that is how the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day ended. I couldn't make this stuff up. Now, do you want to hear about my Monday?
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