‘We didn’t put water in your boots’
I was folding laundry the other day.
I know. I, too, was shocked.
I was folding basically all of the laundry in my whole house. All of it. Because I don’t mind doing the laundry. But the dryer is basically the terminus for clean laundry in my house. Everyone has that one household chore that they’d rather chew their own arm off over the course of three days while trapped under a boulder in the woods than do.
That chore, for me, is folding and putting away laundry. I despise laundry with the same prejudicial hatred I reserve for puppy kickers, child molesters, and the Dutch.
Chill, chill, chill.
It’s an Austin Powers reference. Look at my translucent skin, y’all. I can’t hate the Dutch. I am the Dutch.
Geez.
Okay. So I was folding the laundry and it had been like an hour, because I don’t do crappy jobs fast, but I didn’t feel too guilty because before I set out on the wretched task I put a movie on for the girls and made them popcorn and I even told them they could have Gatorade in the living room. That’s how serious I was about buying myself some alone time.
Because something comes over my children when they see a pile of clean, folded laundry.
Something atrocious.
It’s the same thing that comes over your dog after a bath.
Or a tweaker after, like, one big rip from his pookie.
I don’t know why he has to be a he.
I don’t want to talk about it.
Look, the point is this: my kids can’t deal with a pile of clean laundry. They just become Wreck It Ralph. They simply must climb directly on top of whatever surface it is that I’m placing the folded garments onto – usually my bed – like King Kong and start stomping on sweaters and swinging Spanx around like crazy people.
So this one evening I’m recalling here, I realized that I’d done almost four baskets full of laundry.
It’s not as much as it sounds like. Okay?
Mind ya business, Lucille.
But I’d done nearly all of the laundry, anyhow, by this point and I realized it was very, very quiet downstairs.
Quiet is bad.
Quiet means one of two things, but 90 percent of the time the one of the two it means is trouble. Capital T. If I can’t hear my kids it usually means that something shady is in the process of going down. Quiet means that it’s already too late.
I put down the leggings I was rolling and went into the hallway, leaning over the banister to listen for the sounds of crunching popcorn (at best) or the dull slap of a fist against a bicep (more likely) but nothing. Just the dulcet tones of Poppy singing that song from “The Graduate” while poor Branch sits there in painfully dumbfounded awe.
“Trolls,” you guys.
It’s a “Trolls” reference.
Okay.
So I had a decision to make.
Either I could (a) go and find out what, exactly, was going down or (b) finish the laundry and deal with whatever had likely already gone down anyhow later, but without the pendulous cloud of laundry still to fold hanging over my doomed head as I did.
I chose the latter.
I finished the laundry and was just taking the baskets for each girl into their rooms when I heard the little stomps of feet ascending toward me. The girls presented themselves in the doorway to my room, all grins and giggles.
They were beyond proud of themselves, which is how I knew I was beyond screwed.
My kids love sarcasm, fart jokes, and pranks above all things.
It’s the reason I’ll never, ever be able to deny that they’re mine.
Their new favorite thing is jumping out from behind corners and trying to send my poor, wasted heart into a full cardiac event. And nearly succeeding. Every stupid time. Because my startle response is epic, kids.
Anyhow, they looked resplendent, basking in the glow of a completed prank I could only begin to imagine, with abject dread.
Now. Hang on tight, boys and girls. A bit of exposition-by-reversal is required here to really provide you with the full emotional tone of this entire event.
I wake up between 4:30 and 6 a.m. every day that my kids are home. June’s always been an early riser, and persistent on top of that, so even if I were to be asleep and she awake, she would absolutely ensure that my continued slumber not be permitted to persevere. It’s just the way things be.
I am a single mom, so when my kid is up I’m up. On top of that, I have both (a) insomnia and (b) a desire to go to bed, so that I can toss and turn for hours and hours on end, later than I should because the bliss of solitude and silence and freedom to watch, eat, and listen to whatever I want is too tempting a thing to pass up most nights. So I’m exhausted basically every day of my ridiculous life.
This particular morning I’d been up around 4:45.
Thank you June.
I love you.
So much.
Sigh.
And starting at 4:45 I’d been “on” nonstop. By “on” I mean that state of having to be not dissociated. Of having to be active and engaged with my surroundings. Of having to do tasks, although they’re mostly menial and not particularly physically taxing, nonstop. It’s not the physical exertion from the living of life that exhausts me. I mean, it does, but physical exhaustion is a different sort of exhaustion.
It’s almost a rewarding sort of exhaustion because there is concrete evidence of something having been done at the price of all that energy. Mental exhaustion is soul-crushing. Because when you’ve spent all day just thinking and writing and not really doing doing anything it feels a bit like getting ripped off. I mean. Okay, sure.
You have produced content for the next day’s edition and you’ve made food for your family. Your dishes are done and your garbage is collected. Your kids are bathed, lunches are packed, homework is done, jackets are hung up, shoes are stowed away for the night.
The laundry is folded. Maybe.
And, sure, you’ve done all the little things that keep the days moving forward, but it doesn’t feel like you’ve actually accomplished much aside from just keeping your head above water for another day. Mental exhaustion, to me, is just one of the worst states possible in the entire spectrum of subjective human emotional experience, and I feel it almost daily.
From 4:45 a.m. to that very moment, 7:30 or so p.m., I’d been on.
And as I stood there looking at my beautiful, wildly intelligent, perfectly devious little spawn I could feel the crack already forming in the tenuous dam of my temper.
“What did you do,” I asked the girls, their faces writhing in a furious attempt to choke back their glee with themselves.
“We didn’t put water in your boots.”
Because apparently it was opposite day.
If you’ve ever met me, you’ve also met my boots. Unless it’s 90 degrees or hotter outside I am wearing my boots. Even if my jeans are covering them – which they’re usually not because I’m usually wearing some combination of leggings, tights, skirts, dresses, and enormous sweaters – I am wearing my boots.
I love my boots. I adore my boots. I am securely attached to my boots.
My boots are basically an extension of my very self.
I don’t take my boots off when I get home in the evening, you guys.
I molt. I shed my boots, like a layer of skin. Try to control your raging desire, men.
My boots are to me as Venom is to Eddie Brock.
Without, you know. All the aggravated assault and what have you.
It’s fine.
Look, what I’m telling you is that I love my boots. They’re an essential part of every day of my life.
I didn’t even freak out though. Because here’s the thing that you need to reconcile if you’re going to have children: you cannot love things more than you love your children. You must love your children more than you love your things. Because your children? They’re going to devour your things.
Them’s just facts, son.
I knew that it was going to be bad, because any amount of water in my boots would have been bad. But I was unsure, as I drug myself resignedly down the stairs, head hung low in dejected acceptance of my fate, just what the exact…volume…of the badness would be.
One pint, it turns out, was the exact volume of badness.
Per boot.
Sigh.
I wish that I had some pearl of wisdom that came out of this experience to share with you, but I don’t. And I think that’s the point.
Parenting is exhausting.
The process of domesticating human beings, of refining them, of crafting from the raw organic material that is an infant into a full human being that you would one day want to sit down with and share a beer and have a conversation, is endless, and difficult, and trying, and frustrating.
And occasionally squishy.
And I fully, fully believe that if you claim to enjoy every single solitary moment of parenthood you are either (a) delusional, (b) married or otherwise able to call for backup that will produce itself at a moments’ notice or (c) a liar liar pants on fire.
Oh wait. There it is. Right there’s the silver lining!
They’ve watered my boots but, so far, my kids have never set my pants on fire.
Never mind, I win.
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