Multitasking. I Quit.

Women. We are known as great multitaskers. Our brains have been compared to a six-lane highway, while our counterparts -- the men we know and love -- operate with a one-lane road. I'm sure my house is similar to yours on a regular school morning. I juggle showers and baths, breakfast and bed making, clean teeth and snappy outfits for school or play, packing lunches and picking up toys, dishes and stylish hair-do's for my little ones. We run on a pretty tight schedule in the mornings here, and most mornings I am successfull at presenting four adorable children to the world by 8:40am. But this morning -- oh, this morning -- I don't know what happened. My amazing six-lane highway ended up with the traffic jam of the century. I think it started with one simple little fender-bender that should have been pretty easily managed and avoided. But then another accient, and then another, until no one was moving anywhere, there was complete chaos, and this magnificent freeway was shut down.

Let me explain. We'll go back to yesterday afternoon, early evening, when I was trying to juggle a different schedule. Tuesday. Laundry day. Yes, I do laundry only once a week. It's a beast of a day, but it all gets done before bedtime, and I love, love, LOVE having a day when every item of clothing, every bath towel, every dishrag, every sheet is C.L.E.A.N. But it makes for a very busy day. It consists, on average, of two loads of colors, two loads of darks/jeans, two loads of towels/sheets, and one giant load of whites (that probably should be two loads, but I'm just SO done by that time that I cram it all in together). Now, seeing as I have a pretty fantastic and energy efficient washer and dryer, you'd think that it could all get done in a snap. But alas, I assure you it takes the entire day - right up until bedtime - to get six people's laundry washed, dried, folded and put away. Because I am not one of those flyladies, I do not fold each item as it comes out of the dryer. I wash, I dry, and I separate so that everyone has their own pile. By the time the girls come home from school, our living room is transformed into a virtual dump of clothing and towels. And yes, my girls fold their own clothes and put them away. We are not there, however, with the boys. Someday, I tell myself. Someday.

And on top and in between all that laundry are the regular everyday things that a family deals with. Two to school in the morning, one to preschool in the afternoon, and one down for a nap during preschool time, which gives mom a couple of hours to do some extra housework while waiting on laundry. The girls arrive home about 3:30, and we begin our after school schedule (which, just fyi, is not nearly as organized or tightly run as our morning schedlue). I have not figured out yet how to master the organization of homework, chores, outside time (weather permitting), and extra activites such as music, dance and activity days all before bedtime. Anyone with a rockin' after school plan for your fam? Please let me in on your secrets.

So back to yesterday. Laundry, cleaning, and oh yes, the after school chaos. The girls get home and we start folding clothes like mad. There's whining, there's crying, there's even someone hiding in the bathroom to escape it. But I'm no sucker. I find the culprit and she's back on track right after she glares and rolls her eyes. We rush off to homework time, and I threaten Miss Priss if she isn't done in time, she'll miss Activity Days at the church today. Rotten of me, I know. I just haven't found another solution to getting through homework faster yet. I even arranged for her to be included in a carpool from now on so that I don't have to pack up our clan and drive her (at 4:45) to the church for her 5:00 meeting and arrive back home at 5:10, just so that I can pack up again at 5:45 to make it back down there by 6:00. Seriously. Who decided that it should be ONE measley hour when the building is 10 minutes away? Someone who does not have a daughter in Activity Days, that's who.

So I know you're thinking, "Hey, this all sounds like some seriously awesome multitasking here! You're totally rockin' all this! I mean, honestly, you could be the best mom I've ever seen in action!" Pretty much word for word, no? But don't you worry your pretty little head. This is where the tragedy all begins. Miss Priss is now happily on her way in the carpool off to meet her friends. And I start dinner prep - but not cooking, since I know I'm in charge of pick up at 6:00. What's on the menu, you ask? Hawaiian Haystacks. An easy dinner for a busy day. Lots of simple prep work and barely any cooking. So I'm chopping veggies and pulling out pots; one for rice, one for soup. And while I'm digging through the fridge I notice a package of lil' smokies that has been in there for ... a while. They're not spoiled or anything like that, I just realized that I needed to use them up before they do spoil. I personally don't like them, but they're pretty much mini hot dogs, and the rest of my family loves hot dogs. So I think to myself, I'll put them in a pot with some bbq sauce for a little appetizer before dinner. Everyone will love it! Now, I know that most people prepare them in a crock pot, but I figure that's purely for the sake of being easy and not having to think about it. Stick 'em in, pour the sauce, turn it on, and forget about it. But it's 5:00, people, and NOW is not the time to start work in a crock pot. So into the saucepan they go with the sauce. I have a little less than 30 min. before I need to leave to pick up the girlies, so I figure I can turn them on low and let them simmer a bit. When I leave to pick up the girls, I'll just turn the fire off and restart them when I get back.

Dinner prep is done and it's time to do a quick clean up of the house so we're ready to eat when dad gets home. But boy, I'll tell ya, 30 mintues flies by when you're ordering kids around and turning them into your slaves! Before I know it, we're putting on shoes and rushing out the door. We're a couple blocks from the church and it hits me. Did you remember those lil' smokies cookin' away on the stovetop? Yeah, I didn't. Shoot. I'm thinking, well, I did put them on low. So they're probably just going to simmer a little longer than I wanted. Total time away should only be 20 - 25 min. I should be home by 6:15ish. That's not horrible.

I didn't take into account the fact that they had ALREADY been on the stove for almost 30 minutes when I left. Also the fact that when you get about twenty 8 - 10 year olds together, NO ONE is ready to leave when it's time to leave. And when they finally get into the car, I now have to drop off three other girls instead of heading straight home. Stupid carpool. We arrive home at not 6:15, but 6:35. That puts my lil' smokies on my stove for oh, AN HOUR AND A HALF. We barely walk through the door when the smells knocks us over. "What's THAT?" "What's burning?" "Is that DINNER???" I run to the kitchen to find my pot of lil' smokies ... and it's smokin'. (In hindsight, I really should have taken a picture. But I wasn't thinking about that because at that time, I was smokin' too.) I sent all the kids upstairs so I wouldn't yell at anyone, moved my smoldering pot aside, and pressed forward with dinner. Stupid lil' smokies. I hate those things anyway.

A minute or two later, The Man walks through the door, rushes into the kitchen, and tells me he has to leave again. I'm sure he could see the steam coming out my ears as he asked carefully, "Is everything ok?" All I could say was, "It's just been a bad evening." When we came home again, I explained, in very little detail, that I had burned part of our dinner. He asked what he could do to help, and I pointed to the pot. "Take care of that." After scraping, scrubbing, washing, soaking, and even boiling water in the pot in hopes of that charred bbq sauce cooking off, we still had a nasty little black pot. I said we should just throw it out. I also said I really liked that pot. So he tried everything. When nothing worked, I offerred one last suggestion. "We'll let it soak overnight, and if I can't scrub it off in the morning, I'll just throw it away." I lit a candle hoping to overshadow the burnt smell out of our house, and called it a night. (And yes, I rememberd to blow out the candle before I went to bed. But I suppose I deserved that question.)

This morning was much like other mornings in our house (as described in the beginning of this now ridiculously long post). Except that while doing breakfast dishes, my attention was brought back to this little black pot soaking in the sink. One look told me there was no way that stuff was going to just scrub off. So I put clean water in, and put it back on the stove to see if I could "cook" any more of that stuff off. It boiled away as I cleaned up the kitchen, and the water was now turning very brown, which indicated to me that the stuff was, in fact, coming off. This just might work, and I just might be able to save my little pot. But our time was ticking away, and our 8:40 am deadline was getting closer and closer. The girls were just about ready, and I rushed to stick the boys in the bath. Then Miss Priss hollers for me in a voice filled with despair. What is it now? And she comes into the bathroom to reveal this ...



And the pictures don't even do it justice. The spots are bright pink and they are everywhere. Hundreds of them. The cover her stomach and back, legs and arms. She did tell us last night that her arms were itching, but it wasn't anything like this. Great. This is exactly what I need five minutes before you are supposed to walk out the door for school. Perfect. I snap the photos and text them to her dad and ask what I should do. Send her to school like this? Keep her home? Take her back to the doctor? (She had missed almost the entire previous week of school due to strep throat.) As I'm examining her body, texting back and forth with The Man, and googling images of chicken pox and measles, I hear the boys start fighting in the tub. I know that when I get in there, I will find very little water INSIDE the tub, and most of the water OUTSIDE. One more mess to clean up today. Awesome. So we're minutes away from the first bell at school and I decide to call the nurse hotline. And as the line is ringing I remember something. "This is what my body used to look like when I took penicillin. I'm allergic to penicillin." The nurse reassures me that it's most likely a non-allergic reaction to her antibiotic she's been on for a week from strep. Not contagious and not a big deal. I hang up the phone prepared to send her out the door. I get up to check on the boys and I hear familiar questions from last night. "What's THAT? "What's burning?"

Crap. I run downstairs to find this ...




Stupid pot. Again, the pictures don't quite do it justice. I mean, this thing is charred. That water just boiled itself right outta that pot. But at least this time I think to take a picture. Because this morning is one for the books. And as for my six-lane highway brain? I think I'll take a break and slow things down a bit. Right now that one-way country back road sounds really, really good.

P.S. Day two of the "non-allergic" reaction to antibiotics. They have gotten worse ...