Preschool Must Think I’m a Hobo

My family, we’re not morning people.

Mornings are filled with grumbling and swearing and yelling and coffee and more yelling and sometimes tears. Eventually, we get pants on our asses and food in our tummies and we get strapped into the car to get to preschool about 5-10 minutes late every goddamn day.

I’ve tried different shortcuts, different mom hacks along the way to try and make it to preschool on time. I’ve tried setting my alarm earlier – didn’t work out really well because I’m in an abusive relationship with my snooze button. Long ago I stopped trying to put on makeup or do anything beyond getting dressed, washing face, and brushing hair. I get breakfast ready with machine-like efficiency. Cereal, milk, pouches, DONE. For a while I tried running out the door without brushing my teeth or doing mouthwash, convincing myself that I’d just do it when I got back home…and that rarely happened. I realized I was getting to the end of the day and there was fuzz growing in my mouth. Yuck. Plus, we were still arriving late.

The solution? I started bringing my mouth hygiene items along with me in the car! We’d rush out the door, drop off my son, and then I’d spend the 3.5 minutes in the parking lot brushing my teeth and mouth-washing. This, ladies and maybe two gentlemen who read this, was brilliant. Finally, I could do it all! I became evermore the Supermom, and my car the invisible jet.

…Except, we weren’t invisible. While I felt like a strapping, young backpacker going on an adventure through the wilderness of motherhood, I realized what I must have looked like to the other moms rolling up late with their kids, and to the preschool teachers who could clearly see me spitting into the parking lot bushes.

That’s right. I was barely dressed, still showing up late, standing in a parking lot and hunched over the shrubbery with white foam coming out of my mouth. I looked like a hobo. A hobo with great dental hygiene (or maybe a mild case of rabies), but still.

Over time, as my kids became more and more able to put their pants on by themselves, I was able to carve out time to brush my teeth at home again, and I figured this was it. Life was on the upswing, you guys. Everything’s coming up Milhouse!

And then my youngest started potty training. If you remember from previous episodes, she rocked it, but having her diaper-free meant that I had to cart around her little potty to avoid accidents. We brought the potty to the park. The potty comes with us on beach trips. And oh yes, you bet your mama wine sippy cup that it comes with us to preschool drop off and pick up.

So now I’m also the mom in the school parking lot whose kid is dropping trou and I’m discreetly pouring out the liquid waste if we don’t have time to make it to a real potty. (I also added another hairbrush to the center console because I can never manage to brush my daughter’s rat nest hair before we get out the door. Sigh.)

With all the teeth/hair brushes, potty, and wipes, my car is basically a rolling bathroom, you guys. It already smells like shit, might as well lean in to the stink (can I trademark that phrase?). I don’t know how other moms do it, but, all outside judgement aside, this seems to be working for us moderately well. Basically, I’ve lost all sense of shame. At this point, I might as well set up my own tent.

Who wants s’mores, y’all?

Advertisement

Mood Swings from the Jungle

I’m generally pretty moody in the morning.

And by moody, I mean that it can really go either way – I can be the sweetest sparkle cuddle-monster, or I can be a murderous bloodthirsty jungle panther.  And so far, pregnancy has only widened the gap between these two extremes.

What causes the pendulum to swing, you ask?

Sometimes it’s the direction of the wind, like Mary Poppins’ menstrual cycle.  Other times it’s if the planets are in alignment or if our pantry is sufficiently stocked with poptarts.

Brian gets up for work considerably earlier than I do, considering the work I do now – creating life – I’m so freaking good at, I can do it in my sleep, thankyouverymuch.  He has two alarms: one quiet, melodic one and one so loud and jarring that it wakes the dead.  I’ve grown to hate them both.

Since moving to Oregon and living under Stompasaurus Sex, I’ve taken to wearing earplugs while I sleep.  Sleep is very, very important to me.  I love sleep, and it usually loves me…except when one (or both) of the dreamwreckers named Stompasaurus and Pregnancy get in the way.

So, having said all this, every night is a crapshoot concerning how well I’ll sleep and whether I’ll end up awake when Brian gets up for work in the morning.  And even then, if I end up awake, there is no telling what mood I’ll be in.

Picture the scene from this morning:  Both of Brian’s alarms had gone off.  The second one had successfully summoned several demons from the depths of Hell, and as a result, I was awake.  Because I was awake, I had to go pee.  Naturally.  I got up slowly and made sure I had my bearings, partly because it was still dark, partly because my center of gravity is constantly changing and I am in danger of tipping over even when I am sitting down, and partly because I was wearing earplugs and can’t hear danger.  I was also wearing this really cute zebra print onesie that I can barely still fit into, and the night before I had pranced around saying I was a pregnant zebra and made fierce growling noises.

“You know zebras don’t growl,” Brian had commented when I demanded he pay attention to me.

“Have you ever seen a pregnant zebra?!  I’m sure they have plenty to growl about, if they feel anything like I do.  RAWR!”  Was my reply.

Back to the morning.

Brian, ever the survivalist, says he never expects me to be friendly in the morning, just to be safe. “So I’m always wary when you come near me,” he explained, “Like I’m being approached by a wild animal, and I’m the human with poor night vision.”

So I shuffle back from the bathroom, and decide to help get Brian out of bed, lest he fall asleep again, miss work, and is unable to support his wife and unborn baby zebra.  I decide that the best way to do this is to hit him on the head.  Once he got up, I lunged closer to him, and he froze.  I went in for a warm, cuddly wordless hug that only a deaf, half-asleep, pregnant zebra can give, and then fell back into bed exhausted.

Brian backed away slowly and shut the door behind him, having survived another morning.