Sometimes timing is everything.
Sometimes crazy and brilliant come together in a memorable way.
Like this week, when I felt a special kind of goofy descend upon our family. It didn’t last long, but for four days it felt like I was spinning plates. Just a lot of things going sideways or adding trouble to an already busy routine: the babe starting a new daycare, the temperature dropping to nearly minus 50 degrees with windchill, school buses being cancelled.
Add in a quarterly bookkeeping appointment that always has me filing and organizing at the last minute, and a little sprinkle of solo parenting for four days and I fervently wished for a cloning machine. I couldn’t seem to be everywhere at once. If the babe was tired at home, I simultaneously had to be waiting outside the school doing a rare pickup because of the cold weather. Showering in the morning was done in a rush while two kids played and drove each other crazy nearby. I couldn’t let any of it go, because it had nowhere to fall. So I hung on and waited for Thursday to end, and thank God, end it did. With a PVR taping a single, solitary minute of a show I’d wanted to watch for a week. Thanks, technology, you can bite me.
It wasn’t all crazy, not at all. In the quiet moments, I was doing work I enjoyed and writing things that mattered to me. So no complaints but some days I just wonder what the hell is going on.
And I haven’t even gotten to the part about one of the first mornings when, at 6 a.m., my son and I heard a sound so loud from outside it sounded like part of the house broke off, or something important popped in my head. Buried in pillows and blankets as we were, him having already made the early excursion down the hall to my room, we couldn’t tell where the sound had come from, nor what it had been. But I know we both jumped a foot, and then could barely breathe. And then my seven year old comes out with it: “I know how to call 911 if someone breaks in, Mom!”
Well, that’s a relief.
But to think that either of us have to be breathless in the dark, waiting to hear something, anything that would tell us what we had heard the first time, and both thinking the worst, well, that’s a gigantic mental twist that I’d rather not live through again. I downplayed whatever I could for him, told him I was listening to see if his sister had fallen out of bed (lie, lie, lie), but my heart hammered in my chest.
We survived, apparently it was some random mystery noise that is as of yet unexplained. We tiptoed down the stairs trying not to wake his sister, or, you know, clutch at each other and fall down them. I’m plenty brave about a lot of things, but this isn’t one of them. The babe woke shortly after, and we had barely calmed down before the morning routine hit us and we were off and running. You know, with my heart still pounding and basement still unchecked. It’s dark down there, you know. I had to wait and check it later. (Oh come on, I’m not a total pansy, it’s just had this happened any other time in fifteen years there would have been 200 pounds of husband, 200 pounds of dog and/or an alarm system to keep me from worrying.)
But this one day, nada.
In the middle of all this random silliness, I happened to come across something I had never heard before. And I like it so much I’m going to create a category for it here on the blog, because sometimes I need to be able to write about random, crazy stuff and you’re going to want to say it.
Yeah, you are. And so am I.
Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot.
You read that right.
I’m sure I’ll soon have a little more W.T.F. to share with you. The world is full of it – if I’m not living it, I’m reading about it and rolling my eyes. And most of the time it’s not worth losing sleep over, but you have to be able to share it, laugh about it or just go…seriously???
Here. Have a little W.T.F.
You’re welcome.
Your turn! Tell me about your week – any W.T.F. you’d like to share? What went off the rails for you?
