My kids watch way too much tv.  I know it, and I feel bad about it.  But I've been sick and trying desperately to rest so that I can be unsick because there are only so many times that I can ask my husband to please pick up his jeans from the dining room floor before I start to explode.  I am no Martha Stewart, but my house looks like a bomb hit it worse than usual this past week.  I've been putting away toys, washing dishes that have been left on the counter, walking the dogs, making the kids lunches and snacks, and occasionally remembering to take my own medicine so I don't cough myself into oblivion. I have had a fever for 5 days, but I tested negative for the flu.  I'm dying, but it's ok, because apparently I don't have the flu.

You don't really realize how much little stuff you do until you have to ask your husband to do something EVERY THREE SECONDS.  "Can you walk the dogs real quick?"  "Can you grab O a snack?"  "Can you get M his water?"  "M spilled his water - can you grab a paper towel?"  "Did you walk the dogs yet?"  ... "You still haven't walked the dogs?"  And you get tired of asking, so finally you do it yourself.  And then you're not resting, and you wonder why you're not getting any better.  Of course, you should have just done it in the first place, but your husband said he'd do it, so you actually thought he'd, you know, do it.

And then after rescheduling the swim classes, dentist appointments, playgroups, and music classes for the week that you can't go to because you're sick, you finally get to lay down and rest, and your husband decides it's time to build a shelving unit for his desk.  Right now.  (He still hasn't walked the dogs.)

And you lay on the couch, and your two-year-old decides to sit on your head.

But the good news is that your 5-year-old has asked if he can have a big cardboard box.  The box isn't huge - it housed and delivered a 17.5 pound bag of dog food.  "Sure, why not?"  So he starts playing in the box.  Dad comes in and says something about how this could be his private little area.  After he's been playing in the box for a while, I suggest that he decorate it.  He gets excited and grabs markers, scissors, tape, and other craft goodies.  After a while, from the other room, I hear, "Mom!  I'm drawing on my private area!"

The kid has now spent several days before and after school hanging out in and decorating his box, and it looks pretty cool in there.  He's drawn windows, made and hung pictures, and drawn a bunch of other stuff he excitedly explained to me and I pretended to be super impressed about at the time but now I have no idea what it was.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when I got an email from his teacher yesterday recounting to me the following: "O told another teacher today that he had marker on his hands because he was coloring 'in his private area' this morning. The teacher brought it to my attention, and when I asked him he said, 'I color in my private area every day!' I asked where it was and he said 'in my dining room; it's a special box I go in sometimes!' He is too funny!"

At least he's not watching tv.  And my husband's shelves look great, thanks for asking.

...

Hey, how come he gets a private area and I can't even sit on the toilet without an audience?  Probably the same reason that I will have this non-flu until 2032.  (That's the year he graduates high school.)

Yesterday, I shushed my phone while it was ringing.  I didn’t feel like answering; I just stared at it.  I finally said, “shhhhhhhh” to the phone in my hand.  My friend then hit the button on the side to silence it for me.  I literally “shushed” my phone.  Then we started laughing about how ridiculous this was.  (My friend and me - not the phone because it is not a person and can neither be shushed nor actually laugh.)

What happens to our brains after we have children?  I get when they’re 3 months old and we’re getting less sleep than a tortured prisoner of war (because aren’t we prisoners of war, in a way?  Our lives dictated by little, tiny, impossibly cute tyrants?). But what about when they’re 3, 4, 5... 15?  Is it the cumulative effect of years of sleep deprivation, of psychological warfare battling wills against unrelenting requests for snack just 45 minutes before dinner, of enduring the excruciating jolts of physical pain of stepping on rogue Legos at 1am?

I once read somewhere that having kids is like being pecked to death by a duck. As our kids poke away at us, literally and metaphorically, it’s as though every “Momma!  Momma!  Mommy!  Mom!  Mooooom!  Mooooooooooooooom!” chips away at our actual brains. I can feel my neurons dying. Like, “yeah, I didn’t sign up for this. I have a college degree. I’m out.”  They don’t even ghost me. There’s no pretense here. They’re just gone, unlike the constant poking at my leg by a tiny finger until I finally turn around and ask, “What????” way more harshly than I meant to.

“I farted.”

I have no words.

And sometimes I have no words because they have fallen out of my broken brain.

I frequently can’t think of the words for things.  It takes me a few hours and a few cups of coffee to be able to recall things I’m positive I used to know.  My five-year-old is still learning past participles (and I’m constantly thankful that he doesn’t have to learn English as a second language, because what a brutal language to have to actually try to learn as an adult…).  He’ll occasionally make errors such as “winned” instead of “won” or “thinked” instead of “thought.”

I’ll catch myself making the same errors.  I have taught English Language Arts as well as English as a Second Language.  Yesterday, I realized I said I “eated” a sandwich for lunch.  I’ve come to terms with this, and I am only a little bit ashamed.  I’m also not ashamed that I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning, what day of the week it is, or when I last washed my hair, because my kids are both in bed sleeping, the dogs are fed, everyone got their various medicines, I paid three bills today, and I cleaned up after an event that shall hereafter be known as the great toysplosion of 2019.

But we’re all in the same wobbly, crayon-graffitied, slightly sticky boat.

My friend texted me because, when asked by a waitress at brunch this morning if she would like a straw for her water, she responded with this doozy: “No thanks, I’ll just … use… my mouth.”

She realized after “just” that she was committed.  She had no way out.

Another friend recounted to me the time when her oldest son was just 6 months and she asked her mom, “Could you scissor my steak for me?”  She said she thought she might be having a stroke.

I used to wish I could be on Jeopardy! because somehow I just knew all the answers, even the opera ones, though I don’t even know why because I don’t listen to opera and never did.  Now I’d only be able to win if the categories were allergen-friendly school appropriate snacks, brands and types of diapers, and Potent Poopables.​

So I’ll just sit here, drinking my wine (which is surely good for those brain cells) and maybe reading the Dictionary in a sad attempt to encourage some words back into my vocabulary.  Then I’ll head up to … the place where you lay down when you’re tired… you know, the sleep rectangle with the head squishies.  Bed.  That’s the word: bed.