daybreak
Posted on April 26, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, snark, suburban joys | 12 Comments
No matter how early I get up, how quietly I creep down the creaking stairs and glide into the office in my slippered feet to grab a few minutes of solitude, I am followed by a child who NEEDS something. Today I thought I was beating the hordes by rolling out of bed at 5 a.m. but it would seem that they were each were poised on the edge of their mattresses ready to spring into action at the first sign of life behind the parental door.
G, her brain busy behind closed eyelids, was just waiting to pounce on me because she’d been wondering all night what the phrase “Off the Hook” that’s printed on her McDonald’s Happy Meal American Idol Microphone might mean. I explained, in a voice raspy with sleep and slow with frustration, “It means good, really good, G.” And she sighed with great relief as if to say, I’m so relieved because I’ve been worrying all night that I’ve been sleeping with a microphone emblazoned with a curse or a racial slur.
Then she quickly shifted gears and wanted me to pull our the school lunch menu, decide if coral was an acceptable t-shirt color for a day like today AND needed me to recite the varieties of cereal that were available for breakfast which I assured she didn’t need for at least another hour.
O was right behind his sister this morning to remind me that he needed help finishing his homework, filling out his healthy habits chart that is due today and completing his 12 boy scout achievements before this weekend’s awards banquet. “Now, right now, at 5:15 a.m. you want to do boy scout achievements,” I asked, incredulous because this was a child that refused to do any of these three tasks the evening before when this well meaning mother requested that he get those fractions done, record the days exercise and fruit and vegetable intake and whittle some sticks while talking about honoring God (”Honoring God,” you ask? Yes, this is really a boy scout achievement. Believe me, I didn’t know this when I signed him up.)
By 6 a.m. the dog was out barking at squirrels and garbage trucks and really anything that dares move in the yard or the neighbor’s yard or pretty much anywhere within a five mile radius. The cats were slamming themselves against the closed cat door demanding to be released from their attic confines to drink from the toilet and leave cat litter clumps on my comforter. O was running from one end of the house to the other making gun fighting noises and throwing clay crafted cannonballs at house plants. G was crawling under the desk and snaking through my feet playing with stuffed animals and farting. And I was weeping softly into my second cup of coffee and muttering, “It’s fucking 6 a.m. for Christ’s sake,” mourning the fact that I hadn’t any alone time in the office and I’d actually been unable to even take myself off to the bathroom without a chaperon. I wanted to shout, “What fresh hell is this?”
I suppose I have myself to blame for producing children that are up with the birds. Before children, I was a morning person. Now I am just a noon person who reluctantly,desperately, wakes at dawn to try and find a sliver of quiet in an otherwise chaotic day. All this effort and exhaustion and nothing to show for it but an extra two hours to fill before the bus comes. I will have had three cups of coffee before 8 a.m. and then, spend the rest of the day in the bathroom where I will try and squeeze brilliant thoughts out of frantic caffeine induced ramblings, vowing to begin the following day crawling to the computer because it must be my slippers and their quiet pitter pat on the hard wood floors that herald the day’s beginning.
P.S. I posted the Blogger’s Choice Award buttons here with tongue in cheek and a great deal of internal sarcasm.
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