A Day At The Mall

A few days ago I wrote a heartfelt letter to my children encouraging them to handle life's difficulties with dignity and grace blah, blah, blah-de-dah. I have decided that as soon as I compose something heartfelt such as this, I will in some way suffer disappointment at their young hands.

Here's the deal. When I was still in college, we really had teamwork going on in this house. Now we have what I call Momwork. Which means that mom does all the work. I am not happy with this new phase in our family. Melissa is working into the evenings so she is basically not here. I am responsible for ALL the housework around here. At the mere mention of helping out, Keri will launch into some long tale about why she can't help. What if I decided to just not do anything? What if I decided that I no longer have the inclination to prepare the lunches, or do the laundry, or scrub the toilets. How long would take to reduce these children to the slobs they so want to become?

I really think if it didn't go against every fiber of my being, I would do just that. Honestly, Melissa is not the problem. Her wayward younger sister is. She leaves crap stuff everywhere. All the time. Every day. I am so tired of talking. I am so tired of asking her to pick up her bookbag, purse, jacket, lunchbox, shoes, notebooks, cups, clothes, towels and everything else she leaves lying around that I could pour lemon juice into my own eyes. If I tell her to clean her room, she will half heartedly clear a path in the floor. She thinks that is cleaning. Really, she does.

In happier news, Saturday my sister and I headed to the mall to do our part to stimulate the economy. You know, us being patriotic Americans and all. Bath and Body Works had hand soap on sale FIVE FOR TEN DOLLARS. While I didn't have much money to spend, I could NOT resist that deal. We went into another store so I could replace the shirt that I dropped in bleach. I couldn't find the exact shirt that I had ruined. I found another one and we were off to Dillard's so my sister could give her first born in exchange for some Clinique makeup.

After that we decided to treat ourselves to a nice pre-Mother's Day lunch. She had Taylor, who is eight weeks old now. We could do it. After all, it would be MUCH easier to take the baby since there were two grown women to take care of him. There was about a fifteen minute wait. We decided to take the baby in the ladies' room and change his diaper. We get in there and there are two little girls in the stall with the baby changer. We waited, and waited, and waited some more. My sister finally decides that we will just change his diaper in the stroller. She had no more than taken his diaper off, when I saw the most perfectly arched stream of pee that I have ever seen. We start cleaning up the mess and get his clothes off when the little round disk is beeping that our table is ready. I go flying out of there as fast as I can. If you don't claim your table quickly they will give it to someone else. And we were starving, having only consumed a small muffin for breakfast. As I was flying through the restaurant, I narrowly missed plowing down one of the waiters. He looked at me like I was completely insane, then went about his business. Meanwhile, my sister is cleaning up the baby and changing his clothes.

It doesn't get worse from here, thank goodness. We enjoyed a very lovely lunch and took turns passing the baby back and forth. But one should never become to cocky in dealing with babies.

In all my infinite wisdom, I had started dinner in the crock pot so I would not have to go home from a hard day of shopping and cook dinner. Melissa was working and Keri was with one of her friends, so I enjoyed a quiet evening at home, all alone and enjoyed a savory yet nutritious beef stew for dinner.

I later found out that the shirt I bought for Keri was one she already had. So I must go back to the mall for the THIRD time to try to get her a new shirt. If not, her outfits would be out of balance, and that would simply be tragic, and drive me up a wall. By the way, am I the only parent who buys outfits together? I would never buy Keri a new pair of shorts without a shirt to go with it. Is that obsessive? Or compulsive? Or obsessive/compulsive? mmmmm....if you take into account my five bottles of handsoap I have stashed in the closet, my innate desire for my house to be spotless, and my outfit matching, I don't think it's looking to bright for me.