Our floors never stay clean and just as soon as I put the last dish up, there's a pile in the sink again. The laundry is never-ending and even though I just worked out last night, I have to do it again tonight because I carry this waistline around with me everywhere I go, so I should really like it, don't you think? My car's inspection expired three weeks ago and we're out of eggs and is it almost February, really? Did someone remember to pay the water bill?
(No.)
I look at the calendar and a friend's birthday snuck up on me and I need to send her a card, email her for dinner, pick her up something thoughtful.
I ping-pong between crafting well thought-out, impressive to-do lists with a rigid schedule and losing said to-do lists in my full-of-trash purse and, wait, we forgot to take the recycling out AGAIN?
I cannot serve my child frozen pancakes for dinner two nights in a row, so I push myself off the couch and into the kitchen and think the same thing I think every night: "didn't you just eat yesterday? do you really have to eat again?"
(Turns out he does. As does the dog.)
I have a conference call I can't stop thinking about at home and at work I can't stop thinking "oh MAN what about potty-training."
We need a date night too.
A box of baby clothes to friends sits by the front door and our bed is never -- no really, never -- made. I have five posts to edit and another one to write and it's already midnight and, oh well, I'll just roll out of bed exhausted the next morning like usual.
I owe ten different people ten different emails and the days are both never long enough and endless.
***
Mike gets home, at 9 p.m., like he does every night and he has to eat the dinner I made an hour ago, sneak in to check on the boy I put down two hours ago, before he's in the garage tinkering with his bike, upstairs tinkering with a new piece of furniture or trying to figure out if we have mice in the attic and sometimes I miss him when he's just in the next room.
***
A friend emails to say something randomly and unexpectedly nice right after I get a blog comment that's particularly wonderful. Then Mike sits down on the couch, puts his arms around me, and says, "hi, you." My mom wants to babysit so we can go out with friends and my sister always checks in with me. It's an unusual 70 degrees late-January, even if only for just a day, and after I run three miles straight, I feel like I can do anything, and I feel like I should. I talk to Elizabeth about a May brunch in California and Kyle squeals "Mommmmmmmy!" when I pick him up from school (even if he melts down over leaving school five seconds later). I have fancy new cowboy boots and sparkling water stocked in the fridge and there's always Gossip Girl to save a shitty Monday.
**
Good and bad. Back and forth. Stress and sweetness. Fights and make-ups. Tantrums and squealy sunshiney little boyness. Oh, life, you fickle thing you.
***
I could stop juggling a hundred different balls if I really needed, wanted, had to, and at various times each day, I do. I forget, I screw up, I yell, I leave dirty clothes on the bathroom floor and send out thank-you notes two years too late. I make healthy dinners but I also nuke frozen pancakes and I throw parties just as often as I let important dates pass by unacknowledged. I'm both a good wife and a bad one, sometimes in the same day.
***
This is me, but it's you too, I'd bet so you should know: you're doing great.
We both are.