By Preschool Mom
I think one of the best things I’ve learned from being a mom
is that sometimes you really do just have to laugh. That may sound like a total
cliché, but honestly, it was what kept me from losing it today. I literally
started laughing because if I hadn’t laughed, I for sure would have cried.
We’ve had a lot going on lately, between house stuff, having
two small children and end of school craziness we’ve been running around like
nutty people. (I am not even going to address the fact that it is the end of
the PRESCHOOL year and I’m already inundated with parties, theme days and
teacher gifts – what in the world is real school going to be like?!) Add to
that mix a bout of the stomach flu for me and something slightly more troubling
for my husband and you come up with a recipe for one stressed out, stretched
thin mama. Everything sort of came to a head today, and I found myself giggling
at the absurdity of it all.
Some back story if you please. It is May. It is hot. Our air
conditioning stopped working last week when it was around 89 degrees for
several days in a row. We opened our own “home for displaced fans” (air
circulating, not sports cheering) and tried to hang on through the THREE
estimates the homeowner wanted to get to replace the system. When he finally
picked a place, they dropped the bombshell that they couldn’t come out to fix
the problem for five days. FIVE DAYS!!! Two kids, two adults, two cats and one
very hairy dog without A/C for five days…let’s just say that is not my kind of
math. Then I got the stomach flu. Then my husband got what he thought was the
flu. Cue the laugh so you don’t cry reflex.
We decided to stop “toughing it out” and shipped the dog off
to the air conditioned boarding facility and ourselves to a local hotel with not
just A/C but also with an indoor pool. It seemed like we had fixed our problems
until my husband couldn’t stop throwing up and we ended up in the emergency
room. I couldn’t help but think, “Hey, at least I don’t have to worry about
running home to let the dog out!”
Fast forward to my husband being admitted to the hospital,
me scrambling to find childcare and my son disappointed by the fact that we
couldn’t use the lovely indoor pool because daddy was in the hospital and mommy
was going crazy. So after spending all day in the ER with my husband, juggling
the baby and finding someone to liberate my older one from the clutches of
mind-altering boredom , I fell victim to mommy guilt and promised my child that
I would take him to the pool. As soon as the words came out of my mouth it
started thundering and lightning, literally. Seriously?! Thankfully the storm
passed and the kid got to play in the pool, but not before a deluge of tears
and me having the desk clerk explain to him that they really did close the pool
if there was a storm and mommy truly wasn’t a horrible person.
I thought maybe I was in the clear the next day. I packed up
all our stuff, checked out of the hotel and hauled the kids back to the car
through the pouring rain. After running home (in the opposite direction from my
kid’s school) to get diapers (which I had forgotten to pack enough of) I
stopped at McDonalds to get breakfast (pancakes and syrup – go sugar) before
dropping the kid and heading to the hospital. Mission accomplished, right?
Wrong. By the end of the day I had the following summation: My husband was in
the hospital with a rather contagious bacterial infection, my house still didn’t
have air conditioning, my baby projectile vomited and executed a huge diaper
blow-out at the same time, my four-year-old was found standing naked in the
bathroom (never a good sign) and explained that his clothes were aggravating
his poop, and I remembered that I had to move half of the boxes in our fully
packed attic before 8am the next morning so the guys could fix the A/C. I
couldn’t help it, I literally burst out laughing. I couldn’t help but think
that if we owned a goldfish it would have died. It was just that kind of day…
Even writing this now I sort of have to giggle, but what
really makes me smile is the response I got from my friends when I texted them
about my woes. I just wanted them to share in my awe at the perfect storm of
circumstances and maybe laugh at the absurd comments that issue forth from a
four-year-old brain. Instead, I got a bevy of “what do you needs?” and “how can
we helps?”
As a rule, I think a
lot of us try to do it all. We work, take care of the kids, try to keep the
hubby happy and the in-laws from feeling excluded all within what turns out to
be a terribly short 24-hour day. Rarely do we allow ourselves to accept the
help of others, instead we just push forward until we almost break, thinking
that is the way things have to be. But through all of this, I have learned more
than just how to laugh it off, I learned that asking and receiving help really
is a good thing, and that I have some pretty awesome friends!
