When I'm at work, I usually get home at about 6 pm. I'm usually hungry and tired. I'm excited to see Robert and the kids. While I'm driving home, I envision a certain scene awaiting me. It includes clean floors, clean children, clean clothes in my drawers, and food on the table waiting for me to eat it. It looks kind of like this:
I'm pretty sure that this is an example of an unrealistic expectation. Even as I'm thinking it, I know that it's an unlikely picture. But when I get home, things are far worse than I could have ever imagined. I say to Robert, "What did you even do all day?" Things really look like this:
On the days I don't work, I stay at home and Robert goes to work. Secretly, I think about how great of a mother and housewife I'm going to be. Okay, so maybe I say it out loud too. "Robert, when I'm at home, I create a fun and educational environment for the kids and also clean up the house! Can't you do that too??"
He normally doesn't respond. He's learned to block me out, because I really can be a nagging bitch sometimes.
So, the next morning, I wake up full of ambition and motivation. Well, after I've had my coffee anyway. Before I've had my coffee, things look like this:
Max starts asking for juice. Maeve says, "Come. Pway." They have already somehow made a mess of the living room in the fifteen minutes that I've been lying on the couch hoping that someone would magically appear with a Starbucks latte.
So I get up. I get them dressed. I get myself dressed. They look cute and refreshed. Ready to go. I look frumpy and tired. I load them into the van and drive to Starbucks. Yes, I really do. I have major goals for the day, and the first one is to get myself a Starbucks latte. We drive home. The kids are screaming for coffee too. And coke, chicken, balloons, and daddy. I turn on music so I can pretend I don't hear them.
When we get home, I make them bacon and eggs. The fact that I will touch raw bacon for my children means that I really, really love them. I create a lot of dishes. The kids drop little morsels of bacon and eggs throughout the living room. I hope the cat eats it.
They are so fast and unrelenting with their destruction that I can't keep up! As soon as I pick up their play doh, they are throwing cars out of their car bin. Then they want snacks. Goldfish are soon flying around the living room, threatening to permanently blind someone with a tail fin. I manage to fold a load of laundry, but as I start another load, I leave the precious piles unattended. And when I poke my head around the corner, this is what I see:
After lunch, I lie down with them for nap. I've been busting my butt all day -- I think I deserve to rest a bit. We get up a couple of hours later, go downstairs, eat more snacks, drag out more toys. I never get back to the laundry so it's still scattered all over the floor. I begin to get anxious. Robert should be home in an hour and it does not look like the perfect mother and housewife lives here. So I start vacuuming. Max thinks that vacuuming is a fun game so he pours out some cereal for me to suck up. Maeve finishes her applesauce. By squeezing it all over the floor. It's amazing how many things you find when you are cleaning. Like cat vomit. And a piece of toast from perhaps 3 months ago.
I'm exhausted and it doesn't look like I've done anything all day long. And I haven't thought about dinner. Do they even need dinner if they've been eating all day long? Just as I collapse on the couch to retreat into my dark, twisty place, I hear the door open. I brace myself for a comment such as, "The only thing I smell cooking for dinner is a poop in Maeve's diaper."
But he surprises me.
At least one of us is grounded in reality.
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