If You Give a Mom Two Hours

The other day all the stars must have been in alignment because I had two uninterrupted, kid-free hours during the day here at home.

I pretty much never find myself in this situation, so I was really excited to get to cross at least a couple things off of my ever-growing list of things-to-do-that-I-never-get-around-to:  address the envelopes for the thank you notes from Number 3’s birthday party that have been sitting here in a pile for a few weeks, go through five huge stacks of coupons,  put away the snow pants and winter boots that are all still in the mudroom (oh wait — it’s already almost winter again), start cleaning out the office…

I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I couldn’t decide where to begin.

So… I started by watching a little bit of The Bachelorette Tell All that I had dvr’d.

Don’t judge.

After about 20 minutes, I figured I’d better get moving.

I turned off the tv, put in a load of laundry and went up to the office to just get a tiny bit of cleaning done.  I started a with huge stack of papers I needed to go through.  I got to about the 4th paper.  It was a cute little drawing Number 3 had made when he was in preschool.  I put it in the pile of “stuff I’m saving for the kids to look at when they’re older that they will totally appreciate me for when they’re adults.”

And in that process, something else caught my eye.  It was a Mother’s Day card Number 4 had made.  And then I saw a big folder I had saved from when Number 2 was in kindergarten.  And not too much later I was sitting on the floor, surrounded by papers, pictures, drawings, and stories, crying hysterically at how quickly they were all growing up.

I had to get out of the office.  The only thing I had succeeded in doing was making more of a mess than had been in there 25 minutes earlier.

So I went down the hall and decided to tackle the mountain of clothes stacked near the top of the stairs.

It started out as stuff the kids had grown out of that I had taken out of their closets and needed to put away.  While it remained there for the past two months, it had started to swallow up other things.

I got about 3 shirts into the pile and realized I needed some containers, so I went down to the basement to get some.

On my way down I heard a text come into my phone, so I checked it.

In doing so, I remembered I had to pay a bill online, so I ran back up to the office to take care of that.  While I was there, I somehow ended up on Facebook, where I spent a good fifteen minutes looking at pictures of someone I had recently friended but hadn’t seen in years.  I finally tore myself away, but quickly checked my email first.

There was a reminder from the library that I had three overdue library books.

Shit.

I totally forgot about those.

I went down to the playroom and started looking through the bookshelves.  They were a disaster, so I pulled about 150 books off the shelves onto the floor, and began to organize them.

Rainbow Fish!

One library book found.

I realized the books really needed to be separated into categories, so I started three different piles.  I found about nine books that were coverless or missing multiple pages, so I went to the mudroom to put them into the recycling bin.  While I was in there, I remembered the clothes I had put into the washer, so I put them in the dryer.

Just as I was pressing the start button the dryer, I heard…

“Moooooommmmm, we’re home!  Where are you?”

Great.

While the kids were gone for two hours, I had succeeded in washing one load of clothes, folding three shirts, finding one library book, and paying a bill.

And I had messed up the office and the playroom.

I had accomplished absolutely nothing.

So much for two uninterrupted hours.

What I really need to do is keep the kids at home so I can completely ignore them.

Then maybe I’ll actually get some shit done around here.

Thank you for making me Number 1!

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