7. Finally, wash every bit of exposed skin you can find in the bathroom sink, and douse her in antibacterial gel. Avoid her kisses, because that nasty mouth licked the tampon box.
Programming Note: If the child is still in a pull-up and the emergency is only number one, consider the sage advice to Just pee in your pants.
HOW TO HAVE A ROMANTIC EVENING AT HOME WITH YOUR HUBBY WHEN YOU HAVE LITTLE KIDS
1. Sacrifice naptime to shower and shave and dry your hair. This rare occurrence signals Sexy Time to the husband. Plus, you resemble a sasquatch down there. May need to bring scissors into the shower. We can only ask so much of our razors.
2. Work yourself to death getting all daily chores done and have kids bathed and in PJs before the hubs gets home from work. This alone is so exhausting that you almost go to bed at 6:15 p.m., but then you remember your grooming labor from earlier and don’t want to waste it.
3. Order pizza for dinner so the minions will just eat and be done without spending an hour raging against vegetables. Make popcorn and water cups, and send children to the basement for a “super fun movie night.”
4. Tell older children Mommy and Daddy are folding laundry and will check on them later.
5. Run to bedroom and lock door. Begin grown-up time.
6. Get paged by the eight-year-old over the ill-conceived intercom that the four-year-old needs his butt wiped. Dash to basement; clean preschooler standing with his hands around his ankles singing about potty time. This deeply contributes to your sexy mood.
7. Run back upstairs and lock door. Recommence parent snuggling.
8. Get paged again by the eight-year-old that they are out of popcorn and someone spilled their juice. Instruct eight-year-old to just “put a towel on it” and grab some chips from the pantry himself.
9. Re-recommence “Mommy and Daddy Time.”
10. Eight-year-old again. The six-year-old pushed a button, and the TV isn’t working. Zip back downstairs half dressed, fix TV, haul large ottoman in front of all reachable buttons, and scurry back upstairs.
11. Sexy Time, Take 4.
12. Get walked in on by three-year-old scared of “bad guys” and asking why Daddy is squishing Mommy. Soothe scared child, get a snack, put child back in the TV room, close the gate, sprint back upstairs, double-check the lock on the door, embrace husband.
13. Do not even make it past first base before all the children bound up the steps, banging on the door wondering why it is locked and screaming that the movie is over. Give up in hopeless defeat. Pile everyone on your bed to watch Mickey Mouse, and wonder how you managed to have all these kids in the first place.
14. Pretend husband might enjoy grooming ministry later that night. This will be the last conscious thought you have until your three-year-old pokes you in the eye at 6:13 a.m. asking for milk and clean clothes since he peed in your bed.
Programming Note: Motherhood is so glamorous!
HOW TO MAKE YOUR HOUSE LOOK CLEAN WHILE YOU HAVE BEEN WATCHING NETFLIX ALL DAY, BECAUSE YOU REALLY, REALLY NEEDED TO FINISH THE SERIES YOU’RE LOCKED INTO
1. Realize it’s five o’clock and husband will be home in thirty minutes.
2. Run to master bedroom and make bed. Shove miscellaneous junk in closet, bottom drawer, and on your side of the bed.
3. Take off pajamas (oops) and put on clean yoga pants, bra, and shirt. Redo bun. If hair is unrecoverable and beyond even dry shampoo, put on cute hat. Wipe yesterday’s makeup from underneath your eyes.
4. Brush teeth! If face still looks sketchy, smear on lip gloss.
5. Take the laundry hamper to laundry room and empty it.
6. Take clean laundry to room husband never goes in.
7. Throw dishes in dishwasher.
8. Spray Febreze in all rooms.
9. Act like you have been cleaning all day and can’t bear to mess up the kitchen. Ask to go out for dinner.
HOW TO GET YOUR KIDS TO LEAVE YOU ALONE AND GET OUT OF THE LIVING ROOM
1. Tell them to clean the playroom. They will promptly play with the toys they ignore 97 percent of the time. This doesn’t matter to you. You don’t care about the clean playroom. You just want some silence. You are faking them out, because you are a smart lady.
2. Approximately every thirty minutes, randomly call out, “You better be cleaning.”
3. For good measure, turn on the Food Network in the living room.
4. When husband comes home and asks where the kids are, say, “Cleaning the playroom,” with a knowing look on your face. Laugh like villains because you are in on this trick together. The inmates are not running your asylum! Crack those long-overdue beers and finish last night’s episode of NCIS.
HOW TO FIND A MISSING CHILD
1. Prepare to take a shower or go to the bathroom.
2. Shut door.
Programming Note: The missing child should barge in immediately, but should this method fail, silently open a candy bar or start a very important phone call. Look down: there is your kid.
HOW TO HAVE COMPANY OVER
1. Frantically clean for five hours. Get mad at everyone for being so gross. Feel very, very cranky.
2. Follow your children and husband around like a lunatic picking up everything after them, so it appears your house always looks like this, like a model home that nobody lives in. Where are the shoes and the papers and the crap? You don’t have any. This is how orderly you live. Fine, they are all in the front closet.
3. Lose your mind when you find out your husband pooped in the guest bathroom just before their arrival. Spray hairspray and Windex, because your middle schooler used all the air freshener on his clothes instead of washing them.
4. Greet your guests with a smile and apologize for your house being “so messy,” even though it hasn’t been this clean in six months.
5. Enjoy it, because your house will be destroyed again by tomorrow afternoon. This is your lot in life until you are a grandma.
At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal, remember that in half of all cases, it’s a miracle that this annoying person even lived. Earth is Forgiveness School. You might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.1
— ANNE LAMOTT
CHAPTER 18
FORGIVENESS SCHOOL
A few years ago, my heart got broken. My husband’s too. It centered on one primary relationship but spidered out to several others. It was easily the lowest point in our adult lives. Basically one day we were holding all the important pieces in our hands, and the next day they were all shattered: Brandon’s job, several close relationships, our reputation, our security. It all erupted in a blaze of turmoil and left us reeling for one entire year, the better part of a second, and, truthfully, to the edge of a third. Some loss we predicted with perfect accuracy, but the unexpected collateral damages hurt almost worse.
We felt betrayed, misrepresented, and wounded.