Lungitis

I very rarely get sick. When I was a child, I definitely had my sickly moments but as an adult, I rarely get sick. It seems like whenever the flu or a nasty cold hits my house everyone gets sick but me. I run around the house cleaning out puke buckets, fetching juice, resupplying Kleenex, and measuring out medicine. I happily do this for my children because I am their mother and that’s my job. I will gladly hold back their hair and rub their back while their poor little body vomits hot dog, mac-n-cheese, and chicken nuggets all night long. Course if I ate chicken nuggets I think I might puke too. Anyway, I gladly do this for my children. Let me be clear here, my children and I only have two, but when the flu comes around, Tom suddenly has the same demands, sometimes more, than Megan and Hailey. I have never heard anyone vomit quite like Tom. It sounds like he is vomiting up every last drop of fluid in his stomach along with the stomach itself and perhaps a few other vital organs for good show. I’ll call into the bathroom to him and ask if he is okay. Does he need anything? Tom will call back in between thundering, retching bouts of vomit, “I’m okay. Go back to sleep.” Then inevitably another round of very vocal vomiting will ensue. Right… go back to sleep. Sure thing.

Usually by the time I have aided three people through the stomach flu or a nasty cold, I am wishing that I could come down with the sickness so I can have a few days to lie in bed and have someone take care of me. But no such luck. Not so much as a sniffle. Not so much as indigestion.

Recently Tom came down with a nasty sinus infection. It seems like he will inevitably come down with a cold right before he is supposed to go out of town for a business meeting. That was the case in this situation. I of course hounded him that he needed to go see his doctor and he needed to stay home from the meeting and be in bed. He did go to the doctor which surprised me. He got some meds but ignored the instructions to stay in bed for a couple of days. Instead he packed up and went to his meeting. This annoyed me because I know that it will take him longer to get healthy if he doesn’t rest. This means that upon his return from his business trip, I will have to listen to him constantly complaining about how awful he feels while he is lounging around the house asking if I can get him a sip of water, fluff his pillow, and fetch him a blanket. O.K. that might be a slight exaggeration. He does fluff his own pillow.

Now, what often puzzles me is the reaction my daughters have to their father’s illnesses. They become extremely concerned. They borderline sheer panic and on the verge of holding a bedside vigil for their ailing father who in their opinion is knocking on death’s door. Cancel school, call the mortuary and put them on alert, light candles, and sit by his bedside crying and reliving the glory moments of the past 8-10 precious years. This explanation is necessary in order to fully understand and appreciate the following events.

So Tom went ahead and went on his business trip, and it happened that my daughter’s school was doing a fundraiser one night while he was gone. The fundraiser was at a local restaurant. The teachers help out with the serving and the school gets a percentage of the profits for the night. I love these fundraisers because I can help the school raise some money without buying outrageously over priced wrapping paper or stale chocolates, and I get a night off from cooking. It's a win, win situation. My daughters were sitting at our table eating their dinner. I got up to get something and was stopped by Hailey’s teacher. She said she was very concerned because Hailey had mentioned she was worried about her father who is very sick. The teacher asked me if he was okay. I could see the genuine concern in the teacher’s face. I’m sure she could see the genuine irritation in mine. I calmly explained that Tom simply has a sinus infection, and he will be fine. Thank you for your concern.

Back at the table I explained to my daughters that their father has a simple sinus infection, not cancer, and he will be fine. Hailey said that she was just very worried about her dad and felt the need to discuss this with her teacher. Megan looked at me with complete seriousness and shock at my apparent lack of compassion and said, “Well Mom, he is very sick. I told my teacher he has lungitis.”

WHAT??? What the heck is lungitis? Are you kidding me? Does the whole school know about Tom and his apparent serious case of life threatening lungitis? It’s a sinus infection people!

In all fairness, I did get sick one time last year. I got to lie around in bed for a few days. I was only interrupted a couple of times by one of the daughters wanting to know when I would be making dinner. When there was no response I assume she managed to find something to eat on her own. When I emerged from my bed a few days later, it became clear that the family did not want me to feel left out of their events from the past few days. So they left everything out on the counters, floor, and furniture. Thanks so much. I guess it’s just not worth getting lungitis.

Donuts and Chocolates

Tom likes to buy me flowers. Right now I hear the sighs of women and the words, “That’s so sweet.” It is sweet. I like it when he buys me little things like that very spontaneously. The thing is though that I don’t really like flowers. They’re nice but they just drop their petals all over my table and eventually die. They can be rather pricey too depending on what kind of flower Tom has decided to buy for me. Now I am not trying to discourage Tom’s generous expression of love, and I most certainly am not complaining. However, I have often told him there is a win, win in this scenario for us. He can still express his love for me, save himself a few dollars, and give me something that I will be able to love, enjoy, and hold onto for many months and quite possibly years. The answer…buy me a donut.

I love donuts. Whoever invented donuts is my hero. I don’t know who you are. I do know that you are long dead, but you are my hero. Specifically whoever invented the chocolate nutty donut, well you are the hero of heroes. All hail the chocolate nutty donut inventor.

I have often thought that if I could go back and re-do my wedding there is one thing I would change. Instead of having a traditional wedding cake, I would have had a tower of donuts. I would have had all varieties too so that my guests could choose the donut that was most desirable to them. I can picture it in my mind, and it is a glorious sight. Chocolate nutty, glazed, powdered, sprinkles, jelly filled, long johns, bear claws, oh it is just too glorious. Deep regrets. Note to self, when daughters get married strongly encourage this tower of donuts rather then a traditional cake. Hey my mom pushed the harpist on me, I can push the donuts on them. I don’t think this will be a hard sell on Hailey as she seems to have inherited my love of donuts. Anyway, I digress.

I have seriously told Tom that it is ok if he wants to buy me a donut rather then flowers. He hasn’t taken me up on this offer yet. I don’t know why. I explain all the benefits. The donut is cheaper. He will save a lot of money by just buying one donut. I have also explained that if he feels like he needs to spend more money on me, he is more then welcome to buy me a dozen donuts rather then a dozen flowers. See how that works? Nice right? I have also explained to him that the flowers they just die, but a chocolate nutty donut will stay on my hips for months. There is more longevity in a gift of donuts vs. flowers. And if we go with a dozen donuts well then we are talking quite possibly a gift that could stay with me for years! Does it get any better?

A similar discussion usually comes up around Valentines Day. Tom does not like to buy jewelry. He considers it to be a waste of money. Right now I hear sighs of women and, “Ahhh.” No, no don’t feel bad for me. I somewhat agree but we won’t let Tom know that. So when Valentines Day roles around the inevitable statement comes up, “I don’t know what to get you for Valentines Day.” You may be thinking that I respond by saying donuts. No, that’s for those spontaneous gift moments. Keep up people! This is Valentines Day. The answer…..a heart shaped box of chocolates.

I love those pretty red boxes filled with a variety of delectable chocolate goodness. These precious packages of love are only available one time a year so Tom should seize the moment and grab that big red box with a tacky red velvet bow and fake flower wrapped in cellophane with a giant gold tag proudly displaying $9.99 across the front. Yes, grab that box and race home to me with it.

I have a system with these seasonal boxes of delight. I take a bite out of each and every chocolate in the box and then put the chocolate back in the box. Why? Two reasons. First, I am guaranteed that no one else will dip their little fingers into my treasure box. Who wants a chocolate that someone else has already slobbered on? Hey, with children in the house, you have to do what you have to do. A person is allowed to be selfish every now and then and not share. Again, it’s Valentines Day. It is a holiday. Second reason is that I get twice the delight out of the gift. I can delight in my first round of bites and then on my second pass through the box, I feel the love again.

Tom usually goes with something a little more extravagant for Valentines Day. What can I say, he’s a keeper. I’m just putting it out there that I personally would be completely happy with donuts rather than flowers and a box of chocolates on Valentines Day rather than….well come on I would be just plain stupid if I said jewelry. If he really wants to buy the jewelry, I’ll take it and go buy my own box of chocolates. Only I will wait until the day after Valentines Day when they are 50% off. Mom didn’t raise a dummy.

Donuts and chocolates are gifts that I can deliciously enjoy and keep on my hips for a long time. The way I see it, for the past 13 years I have been cooking dinners for my Tom out of love. And he has eaten those meals and appreciated all the love that has gone into making them. Slowly over the course of the past 13 years, he has held on to a small portion of those meals right in his stomach. So he collects my love in his stomach, and I’ll collect his love on my hips. It’s a match made in heaven.

Filing Away My Toilet

When I worked in the “real world” there were undoubtedly things that would come up which I had no desire to deal with. I am sure that I am not alone in this. Everyone has a regular work task that they do not enjoy doing. There is always that report that you dread completing, or a phone call that you don’t feel like making. One of the things that I just did not like doing at work was filing. It was tedious, time consuming, and way down on the list of priorities. It was way, way down there, after sharpening pencils and cleaning lint out of my pen tray. Some things that you dread doing, you can put off until the end of the day. Sometimes you can manage to put a task off until the next day. And still, there are some dreaded jobs that you can possibly push from Friday into Monday. When it came to me and my filing I would put it off until the stack of filing on my desk had grown to roughly the same thickness as Webster’s Dictionary. About that time I was beginning to think it was possibly necessary to break down and face the monster head on.

On one occasion I asked Megan and Hailey if they would like to go into work with me on a Saturday afternoon and “pretend that they were office workers” and help me with some “very important work”. Their eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning. Never have I seen my hermit children race to the car with such enthusiasm. When we arrived at work I presented them each with a stack of papers that needed to be filed and instructions on how to go about completing the task. I used my “very serious so please pay close attention” voice and in great detail explained the concept of finding a file with the correct identifier on it, pulling the file out, placing the necessary piece of paperwork in the file and then returning the file to its correct place in the drawer. Hailey looked at me with great eagerness. Pen in hand and stack of papers in the other she was locked, loaded, and ready to go. Megan looked at me and said, “That’s boring. I thought we were going to do real work.” When I explained to Megan that this was in fact “real work”, I think I killed any thought she ever had of going into my then field of employment. I guess it is safe to say that she has the same impression of filing as her mother. So, Megan spent the remainder of the time in my office spinning herself around on the spinning chair while Hailey happily pulled files, placed papers in the file, and put the file away. When I later showed Hailey how to use the copy machine, she looked like she was going to cry tears of complete joy. I awarded her with a pen from my office. I think that day is going to go down as one of her greatest life moments.

What I am finding now that I am a full time stay at home Mom is that it’s not so easy to push those undesirable tasks off to another day, week, or yikes- month. My current undesirable task is cleaning my bathrooms. I hate it almost as much as filing. To make matters worse, Hailey doesn’t seem to possess the same unbridled enthusiasm for cleaning bathrooms as she had for filing. This means that I can not manipulate her into cleaning the bathrooms for me. And Megan? Well, I have come to the conclusion that the only thing Megan genuinely likes to do is play. I tried to have Megan “play” that she was a mommy and needed to clean her bathrooms in her house. She saw right through that. She said when she plays mommy, she has a maid. Smart girl, I need to see about getting one of those maid things.

Nope, it’s all up to me. On a regular basis I have to reach deep down inside, pull on my rubber gloves, and break down and clean that bathroom. I go right for the centralized filth; I go for the sink first. In the sink I am regularly greeted with layers of dried on, day old, sticky, minty toothpaste. Is it so hard to rinse out your sink after you brush your teeth people! And is it just me or does anyone else go crazy, lunatic nuts when five minutes after you have cleaned the sink someone goes and brushes their teeth and leaves a fresh glob of toothpaste in the sink! Are you kidding me?!?! I digress. Moving on, it’s over to the shower where the daughters thought it a good idea to turn the shampoo bottle upside down and not close the top. Excellent, now I have gooey, sticky shampoo running down the side of the shower. No amount of Scrubbing Bubbles is going to rinse that away without physical intervention from me. With the sink and shower cleaned and marked off the list, it’s time to turn to the ugly filing cabinet of my bathroom, the toilet. It takes every ounce of focus and perseverance that I can muster to take that toilet brush by the hand and scrub away. The scary thing is that when you have small children in your house, you never know what you will find when you open the toilet. I will spare you the horror stories. I will only say that there have been occasions when I have lifted the toilet seat and let out a scream of terror. I know that I am not alone in this. I am sure there are many of you out there who can relate.

The bottom line (no pun intended) is that there is no way of getting around this undesirable task of bathroom cleaning and especially no way around the toilet cleaning. No, putting it off for a few days will only make the toilet monster more ferocious, and I would most definitely not recommend putting it off until next week. No, I just have to suck it up and accept that there is no way I can file away my toilet which does plenty of filing away for my family. Sorry but I just could not resist that one.

Shine Bright

Monday is my laundry day. Just putting that down on paper sounds depressing. Who has a laundry day? Most people have a laundry week. For most normal people, laundry is a nightmare that continues throughout the whole week. It is the one household task that you never seem to catch up on. It wasn’t all that long ago that I was one of those people. How many times have I put a load of laundry in the washing machine and then forgotten about it until a few days later when I realize that Megan is out of clean jeans so I open up the washing machine only to discover a foul odor coming from the laundry that has remained in there for far too long? I know I am not alone in this. I re-wash the forgotten load, but I had a friend who said she would just put the forgotten load in the dryer with extra dryer sheets. She said the dryer sheets were able to mask the musky smell. Seriously. No judgment here but I just never felt right doing that.

I actually like to do laundry. It is the only household task that I really truly do enjoy. I find it very satisfying to wash 8+ loads of laundry, dry them all, and fold them very neatly. I worked in a clothing store when I was in college. The store had very specific rules about how each clothing item was to be folded. I have not managed to break the habit. I am very anal retentive about how my laundry is folded. I cannot help it. For this reason, it is the one task that I have great difficulty handing the responsibility of over to other family members. Perhaps this is why I make sure to find time to get the laundry done regularly. Fear that someone else in the family might actually decide to do it.

There is one task within the laundry responsibilities that I am not so good at. I hate to change the sheets on my children’s beds. I am not even going to admit how long it might be in between sheet changing’s. The problem is that when our family made our first relocation, Tom and I bought the daughters new beds. They both had hand me downs and we were basically trying to soften the blow of moving to another state. Both girls wanted loft beds. At the time, Tom and I thought it was a great idea to purchase the loft beds for the girls. With the bed up off the floor, they would have more space in their bedrooms. We purchased the desk attachment to go under the bed so they would have a desk to sit at and do homework. Please note that they have never done their homework in their bedroom since we made this purchase. I guess that was a waste. However, the desk is a nice place for them to collect all kind of needless junk. For those of you who had a loft bed in college, you already know why I detest changing the sheets in my daughter’s loft beds. Simply put it is a task that is death defying. Teetering six feet off the ground, wrestling with sheet and mattress, it is terrifying.

I know it is not healthy to leave the sheets on my daughter’s beds for too long so every now and then I have to break down and muster up the courage to tackle the beast. The first step in changing the sheets is easy but lengthy. I have to unload the beds. No, not simply remove the dirty sheets. I have to remove a multitude of items that my daughters have been storing up in their beds completely out of my sight. One time I climbed up into Megan’s bed and gasped. It appeared that her Webkinz had multiplied up in her bed. Not kidding. I am certain that she did not have that many Webkinz. I think something funny was going on up there when no one else was around. It can be very scary up in the lofts so I down rubber gloves (you just never know what you will find) and set to work removing books, stuffed animals, cups, lots and lots of Kleenex (used and unused), Nintendo DS, DS games, music, papers, pens, pencils, crayons, markers, white boards, dry erase markers, erasers, shirts, pajama pants, lots and lots of socks, head bands, ponytail holders, lip gloss, pencil shavings, a half empty bag of animal crackers, baskets, and finally we are at the bedding. Honestly, do they even sleep in the beds? If so, how? Where? Is there even any room?

With the bed a clean slate so to speak, I take a deep breath, dig out my Will and insurance papers for Tom just in case and make the climb to put clean sheets on the bed. The fitted sheet in hand I delicately unfold the sheet out over the bed while I am solidly planted in the middle of the bed. While on the bed I attempt to lift the corners of the mattress so as to wrap the elastic under the corner. This is where my newly developed muscles from the floor cleaning become handy. Once the fitted sheet is secured under one end of the mattress, the mattress explodes from my grasp and thunders down on the bed frame. One down, three more to go. As I make my way to the final corner, I am attempting to pull the excess sheet out from under my weight which is currently on top of the sheet while at the same time pull up the final mattress corner. This is the most intense part of the whole task. I have on many occasions nearly flung myself right over the guard rail of the loft while attempting to pull the excess sheet tight. I lack all coordination. This time I manage to get the sheet completely secured on the mattress. It is now time for the top sheet. There are no military corners with a loft bed. I’m just happy if I manage to get the sheet on the bed and secured. More often then not I end up with barely any sheet on one side to tuck in and an excess amount on the other side. I do not fix it. They are children and don’t care what their bed looks like. Clearly, please refer back to the list of items I had to remove from the bed just to change the sheets. With the top sheet on, all that is left is the comforter. Now here is a sore spot. I spent good money on pretty comforters that no one can see because they are 6 feet in the air surrounded by a guard rail. What a waste. With task completed, sweat dripping from my forehead, lungs on fire and gasping for breath, I lean back on Hailey’s bed to catch my breath before descending the bed. I happen to glance across from the bed to a hand written sign she has hung high on her wall. The sign says, “Always remember to shine bright and to be who you want to be.” I wipe the sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve and realize that I have the “shine bright” part down with no problem. The, “be who you want to be” part, yah, I need to hit those job classifieds again cause I don’t think I’m exactly there yet.

Floor Cleaner

My dog licks my wood floor. Let me give you a little background on my dog. My dog is 13 years old. She is a golden retriever/ lab mix. She is mine and Tom’s first child…even though she is technically 91 years old now. Anyway, Murphy, my dog, is “special”. She flunked out of her first attempt at Obedience School. This is not entirely Murphy’s fault. I blame this unfortunate occurrence on the fluffy poodle next to us who deliberately distracted Murphy prior to the “sit” command testing. Fluffy poodle didn’t get scolded but Murphy did. Gotta watch out for those poodles. Don’t turn your back on them for a second because it can truly mean the difference between Valedictorian and Rubber Chew Toy Tester #6. Anyway, I think this unfortunate occurrence really had a negative impact on Murphy, and she just wasn’t the same after that. A wounded spirit. Who am I kidding? She was never quite normal. Megan once told my parents that Murphy needed to go see the Wizard about a brain. Enough said.

Now I like a neat house, but I am by no means a “neat freak.” I do what I have to do to get the house clean, and I pray that I don’t have to repeat the process for a week. So when I do take the time and energy to clean my house, I don’t want anyone walking behind me and undoing what I have just spent valuable time on when I could have been sitting in my indention on the sofa learning about cornice boards and the risks involved in painting a room bright red.

Every week I sweep my wood floors. I then get out this ridiculous floor mop which is just a towel with elastic around the edges that wraps around a big plastic rectangle. It’s supposed to clean my floor better then a traditional mop. Someone is making a ton of money off of gullible people like me who saw this contraption in the store and thought, “I must have this. It will surely give my floors that natural glow.” Right. So I spray the floor cleaner on the floors and then kill my arms and back trying to push this stupid “mop” across the cleaner to clean the floor. It slides about as good as the grocery cart that you always manage to find with one bent wheel. You know the one that seems fine until you are half way through your shopping with a cart full of groceries and then suddenly the wheel goes sideways and you’re left with no other choice then to finish your remaining shopping forcing a cart to go straight when it really only wants to go to the right. I digress, that is a whole other story. The alternative to my ridiculous contraption is to spray the cleaner on the floor and then get down on my hands and knees and wipe the floor with a towel. I’m no Cinderella so we’ll stick with the ridiculous contraption.

After a half hour of this torture, I am finished and I survey the room with a sense of extreme accomplishment and throbbing biceps. At least I am one step closer to being ready for strappy tops this summer. I collect my cleaning tools and head to the laundry room to put everything away hoping I have not missed the exciting documentary on the history of Twinkies. As I walk back towards the kitchen, I hear, “clink, clink.” This sound is like nails on a chalkboard for me, like the phone ringing after getting a colicky baby to sleep, like the word “Mom” when you’re crouched in your closet trying to have a conversation on the phone. It is simply put maddening. It is Murphy’s ID tags clinking together as she is running her enormously large tongue across my newly cleaned floor and leaving a trail of dog slobber in her wake.

What I don’t understand is that she has a normal size tongue any other time. But when she is doggy slobbering my newly cleaned wood floor, her tongue appears to have lengthened by a foot and widened by five feet. She becomes a Zambonie on my kitchen floor! Furthermore, this 91 year old dog suddenly has the pep of a puppy as she turbo charges the circumference of my kitchen and eating area.

“Murphy, Stop!”

Why do I yell? She can’t hear anything other then the sound of food hitting her dog bowl. This is an ongoing battle between Murphy and me. What is it that tastes so great on the floor after I clean it? Does the floor cleaner taste good? I don’t know. I can’t say that I have ever been so inclined to give it a try. Given a choice between water, coffee, wine, martini, floor cleaner, well, what would you choose? Yes, it is a battle between housewife and beast. She is 91. She is “special”. She never made it to see the Wizard, so I think you know how this is going to end. The bottom line is that I couldn’t teach her the “sit” command when she was 1 so I probably am not going to teach her the “no slobber on my floor” command when she is 13. Zambonie away, Murphy. At least in these hard economic times we are keeping the floor cleaner company in business. Oh and I have the added bonus of a good upper body workout.

In Demand

I once attended a training by a motivational speaker. She was talking about how the words we use to describe a situation can have a direct impact on how we view the situation. For example, when our “in” box at work was larger then our “out” box we may use words like, “I am stressed out” or “I am over-worked” to describe our attitude at that given time. This motivational speaker recommended that we use the term “in demand” rather then “stressed” or “overworked”. Apparently we were supposed to feel better about the ever increasing amount of work piling up on our desk if we felt some form of importance or felt we were “in demand” rather then “stressed out”.

I no longer have a desk with an “in” box or “out” box. My calendar is no longer filled with appointments and meetings. Due to recent events in my life, I find myself in a similar situation as many Americans right now. I have returned to the role of a full time stay at home parent. My days are definitely different now then they were when I worked outside of the home, but my mornings are never by any means dull. At 7:00am I wake my children up and ask them to get in the shower. This is followed by 5 minutes of Megan and Hailey yelling at each other and debating who is going to get in the shower first. Interesting note here, according to this argument they both got in the shower first yesterday. I sleepily wander into the kitchen to start the coffee. Tom breezes by me, kisses cheek, and says, “I’ve gotta go. Have a good day. I love you.” He then yells to our daughters that he is leaving, loves them, and have a good day. Angelic voices yell back, “Love you Daddy.” Please note that this is the first of many good-byes this morning from Tom.

High pitched screaming from Megan to Hailey, “You’re taking all the hot water! You’ve been in there for 20 minutes!”

Hailey yells back, “I just got in here!”

I yell to Megan that Hailey has not been in there 20 minutes and please be patient. I also explain that she could have gotten in the shower first. I calmly ask Hailey to please finish up. Back into the kitchen to determine if lunches need to be packed.

Tom comes flying into the house. “Have you seen my Blackberry?”

“No.” Note to self, really need to make that appointment to have Tom tested for early onset of Alzheimers. Tom begins running through house looking for Blackberry. I make a half hearted effort to look for it when, again, high pitched screaming from, this time, Hailey. “Mom, I don’t have anything to wear!”

“What do you mean you don’t have anything to wear? I just did laundry.”

We then work our way through every pair of pants she owns and I get the following run down: too short, too long, too dark, too light. The shirts are too fancy, not fancy enough, sleeves too long, sleeves too short, and “bunchy in the front”….what? Frustrated I tell her to find something to wear or I will find something for her. Hailey could really benefit from attending a school with a uniform policy.

Tom pokes his head in the room and says, “Found it. I’m running late. Have a good day. Love you. Bye girls, I love you!” Angelic voices yell, “Love you Daddy.”

I head back into the kitchen. Where was I? Of yes hot lunch or cold lunch. Megan walks in and dives into her cereal. “Mom can you pack a little more in my lunch today? Yesterday you didn’t pack enough.”

“Sure” Of course yesterday she told me that I packed too much the day before. I appear to be having difficulty finding that common ground. Hailey comes into the kitchen wearing the first outfit that I had recommended. Of course.

I begin making lunches when Tom runs into the house again. “I forgot my wallet. Have you seen it?” Frantic running through the house occurs once again. I recommend that Tom find a place to put all this stuff when he gets home from work so we don’t have this problem everyday. Tom mumbles something that I’m pretty sure wasn’t nice. Screaming in the kitchen from Megan, “You cannot have the last of the cereal. It’s mine!”

“I haven’t had any!” Hailey screams back. No more patience, I yell at Megan to give Hailey the cereal box.

Tom flies through kitchen, “Found it. I’m going to be late. Have a good day. Love you!” Angelic voices call out, “Love you Daddy!” I think this is finally the last good-bye from Tom. Three is our average, sometimes more, sometimes less. I look at the clock and realize that I need to start the car. It’s winter need I say more. I down my boots, coat, hat, scarf, and gloves open the garage door and start the car. I head back into the house where I am bombarded with, “I need you to sign this.” “I forgot I have a spelling test.” “My field trip money is due today.” “I can’t find any socks.” “Where are my hat and gloves?” Now this confuses me because everyday when the girls get home from school, I ask them about their homework, we work on it, and I assume we are all set for the next day. We are all set until the next day when we are 5 minutes from leaving for school and half a dozen things pop up that need to be taken care of. “Get your stuff on. It’s time to go.” At 8:25am I pile the girls into the car and we head off to school. School is less than a mile from home but we manage to get through the spelling list. I pull into the parent drop off line with all the other Moms and Dads of suburbia unlock the door for the girls. “Bye, have a great day!” Finally it is my turn for the angelic voices, “Love you Mom.” The door slams behind them. Total silence. I think to myself, “I am in demand.”