Momedy

Apparently today is International Women’s Day, or so I gather from Facebook, which seems to be my only news source these days. That last fact, paired with all the impressive women I’ve seen posts about today has really served to remind me that I have never been less interesting.

I used to be interesting, I’m sure of it, or I never would have tricked Eric into marrying me. I’m not sure what I was texting him about five years ago when he was a week away from proposing, but I know it wasn’t this:

A few clarifications: I have my husband entered in my phone as Sweet Baby Ray because of his intense love for barbecue sauce, not because we have freaky nicknames for each other. I’m pretty sure I’m entered in his phone as Mrs. Berg, if you’re looking for proof. If he wanted to name me after something I have an intense love for, I’d be in there as Big Mac or Chardonnay or Online Shopping or Full Nights Rest, and none of those have quite the same ring. Except maybe Big Mac, I’ll lobby for that.

Second, that is a picture of a solid bowel movement. Evelyn’s, specifically, and it was sent to Sweet Baby Ray to celebrate its solid nature, after three straight days of the opposite. Ev got sick on Friday and between Friday and Monday I wiped her butt no less than 256 times. Which I guess is something I’ve mastered. I am an excellent butt wiper and can do it while nursing another child or reading to another child or doing pretty much anything else, and I hope that’s a fact Evelyn remembers 25 years from now on International Women’s Day when she’s posting about how inspirational her mother is.

That text message celebrates both the end of my wiping responsibilities as well as the official end of my having anything of actual interest to talk about.

The trouble is, in order to find interesting things to discuss I would need to be doing or reading about doing interesting things, and for that I would require time.

I used to excel in time management, but ever since Lottie, everything I do comes at the expense of something else. If I respond to texts and emails, the kitchen doesn’t get cleaned up. If I clean my floors, the laundry sits in the dryer for 48 hours and Sweet Baby Ray goes to work in “no iron” pants that no iron could smooth if it tried. I’m writing this blog post during the time I should be meal prepping dinner which means everyone’s getting peanut butter sandwiches and canned veggies tonight.

A few weeks go I painted the changing area between our closet and bathroom. When we moved in it looked like this:

We removed the wallpaper in the closet as well as the carpet, but both the trim and the walls still needed to be painted:

Someday I’ll get a different countertop on there, new light fixtures and some new switch plates, but this spruced it up for now. What it didn’t spruce up was my appearance or the state of my house. This project used up every minute of naptime and bedtime for three straight days, which meant by the end of it I hadn’t showered in 36 hours, had 9 loads of laundry and 3,000 emails in my inbox. About 2995 of them were promotions from various places I’ve online shopped in the past, but it’s still a number that makes me shut my computer immediately  upon opening it.

It’s been three full weeks since I finished, and yesterday I finally caught up on the all the tasks that I’d neglected to do this. Then in one of my prouder parenting moments, Alex ran full speed around the corner wielding a hammer, and  I realized the tools that I used to switch out the mirror and the drawer pulls are still sitting on our dresser where I left them.

They’re sitting next to the dry brush I bought and never use, because there’s barely ten minutes to shower in the morning much less an extra five to exfoliate.

Someday I’ll either get the hang of this, or my kids will grow up and move out without ever knowing a mother who can do both laundry and dishes in the same week, and I’m just going to have to be okay with either scenario.

I’m also going to have to be okay with the fact that anything I am going to accomplish will have to be accomplished while my kids are asleep, because when I try to do anything while they’re awake, I walk in to scenes like this:

When questioned, Evelyn said she was helping her baby get back to regular poop.

Alrighty.

Then said “Mommy aren’t you so glad I’m back to regular poop?”

You have no idea how glad, child. And also I’m glad I didn’t have to administer a shot to your groin to help you accomplish that.