Monday, March 24, 2008

Five Questions...Maybe Six...

I keep thinking of doing a 24 hours in my day type entry in this blog but every time I’ve considered the possibility, I’ve quite honestly lost my nerve. The trick to comedy is never to reveal everything, always have a joke in spare. I admit, my reserve of jokes have as of late, run a bit thin. SAHM’s, writers, whatever you may be, you can’t pour out if nothing is being poured in. So I’ve embarked on a quest to replenish my stories and my spirit to allow this blog to continue.

One should also recognize that good comedy is modeled out of pain and suffering. I haven’t been suffering as of late enough for my art apparently. Though I admit I thought when toddler 1 and toddler II took out the giant sized rewards bag of M&m’s for pottying and dumped them on the hard wood floors and went stomping, I thought I just might be feeling pain then.

When my daughter in kindergarten came home with a report card that said she didn’t know her numbers up to 20, we began doing drills. For some reason, the number fifteen appears to be something of a mental stumbling block for her. Even saying fifteen fifteen times in a row did not institute recall. Tucking her in at the end of the day, she apologized to me for not remembering the number. I said, “Which number?” She said, “I don’t know.”

There are days when treading water is all one can do, and today was one of those days. My son was caught up in a book and missed his bus stop by several miles. He called to be rescued. I had just unloaded the car.

The toddlers found a squirt bottle of body wash and sprayed the bathroom shower and tub while I was feeding the baby. I had just cleaned the bathroom.

They then played car with the laundry baskets. This meant dumping the contents of the laundry baskets. I had just folded the laundry.

That primal scream you sensed around noon today, it was me.

When things get this rough, all I have left that I can do is pray. God gets a lot of “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think so. No.” I never win these arguments with the Almighty.

Then my daughter got in the car and talked about how her social studies teacher said it cost $250,000.00 to raise a kid from birth to age 21. I point out that technically, I’m off the hook three years earlier than that as she’s legally an adult at 18. I figured that probably saves me a minimum the area of $160,000.00. She counters that she hasn’t cost that much so far, and asks where’s the 90K to date?

I told her I’m a below average kind of parent.

The day to day momwork sometimes becomes so oppressive sometimes that I can forget to have fun. So I resolved earlier this year to have each of my kids ask a question when they came home from school to help: “Did you read? Did you write? Did you exercise? Did you play the piano? Did you pray? Did you play?”

Usually, on a good day, I managed to execute a yes for three of these questions.
And so the day goes on and I help with homework, I take kids to baseball, I bring dinner to the practice so we can eat. We sit and wait for the day to end. Tucking in each of my overwhelming blessings, my son asks me if I played today. Yes I did. I played pool and shot a good round, and when my daughter was doing push-ups at basketball practice, I showed her up by matching her push up for push up, with better form.

As such, I’m going to add the question, "Did you show off?"

And see how many days I can go with the answer being “Yes.”

for more modest humor, and some that shows off better, try www.humor-blogs.com!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And my question shall be...did you pray? And it is fair to ask me the same thing. I love you, Sherry!Mom

Leaving a comment is a form of free tipping. But this lets me purchase diet coke and chocolate.

If you sneak my work, No Chocolate for You!