They are Trying To Kill Me

This was really not the topic I had in mind for my inaugural blog. My first blog was going to be something erudite and full of insight. "This will not be simply a 'mom' blog," I said to myself. My first entry would be thought-provoking, world-changing, even. People who know me would be rendered speechless. "We had no idea such genius walked among us," they would muse, wiping tears from their eyes as my words moved their souls. But as the title of this blog suggests, I live a cluttered life inside a cluttered head. So, much like my cluttered house, I've decided sometimes you just deal with things as they present themselves to you.
It is not unlike my method of house cleaning: I start out with a plan to clean the kitchen but that requires moving the preschool projects into the "preschool projects folder" (it is far less organized that it sounds). In that process, I will find any number of toys that need to be returned to the playroom upstairs, so I will search for an empty laundry basket for that purpose. There are, of course, no empty laundry baskets necessitating that I start a load of laundry to empty one. But, invariably there is a forgotten and mildewing load of clothes already in there that must now be re-run before I can put the new load in.
With the laundry basket still occupied and the washer unavailable, it is back to the original plan of cleaning the kitchen. Next step, sort the week-and-a-half worth of mail that gets plunked on the counter by the door (I'm just saying, if you aren't going to sort it, don't bring it in...but that is a blog for another day). Oh, look at that! There's that bill that will be coming due on the 2nd. What? The second was LAST Tuesday, you say??? Great! Now it is off to the computer to pay bills. And while I'm here, I'm going to be very selfish...I'm going to take thirty seconds and check my email. I might even RESPOND to one or two! How decadent!!! Oh, wait, no can do. The four year old needs help wiping his bum. ONLY my help. NOT Daddy's help. Mommy has apparently earned some sort of advanced degree in Rectal Sanitation Engineering and as such, the customers agree, is the far superior choice for all matters fecal related. At which point the three year old will most assuredly run by naked, screaming in wild-eyed terror as the puppy nips after her. This prompts a discussion about a) appropriate times and places for one to disrobe and b) not feeding the puppy 38 pounds of treats and then expecting him to leave you alone when you run away with one still in each hand. During this discussion, said puppy will have chewed the limbs off of at least one cherished toy, "Which should never have been brought down here in the first place, dammit! What is it going to take for you to start taking care of your things? If you cared so much about it, it wouldn't be where Spooky could get it! Maybe I'll just call Santa myself and tell him to skip our house this year! Go to your room! And as for you, into your crate! Bad dog!!!"
By now it is bath and bed time. I am on the verge of a stroke. The kitchen is still not clean. In fact, I'll admit it. It has not been clean since 2003. The laundry will sit in the washer overnight and get funky, AGAIN. And, at some point, between the laughter which turns to screaming/crying/fighting and back to laughter going on in the bathtub, I will try to remember what my life was like before these two little tornados blew into it. You know what? I wouldn't trade it for the world. Well, maybe reverting back to the pre-child levels of poo interaction on any given day would be nice.
In the posts to come, the topics will vary widely. But ultimately, no matter how hard I try, I know this will end up being a 'mom blog'. Because for mothers, from the moment those little people enter your life, every opinion, every thought, every breath is influenced from its inception by "momness". It is a permanent prism through which you will forever see world.
As for the title of this very first blog, I sat down to write it moments after my three year old daughter very nearly succeeded in pulling a dresser over onto her tiny person. In a moment that convinces me further of the need for instant replay in my own life, I somehow managed to leap from across the room, over a train table (stubbing a toe on my right foot and landing square on a metal toy airplane with the heel of my besocked left foot in the process) and execute a perfectly thrown shoulder block - you'd have been proud, honey - to slam the dresser back up and into the wall before it squashed my baby. Then I sat down on the aforementioned train table until I stopped shaking enough to walk again (and pry the airplane out of my left heel). And as I sat there, I hoped that the 80's are overrated (the age, not the decade) because I am pretty sure I lost those 10 years in that one harrowing moment. The 90's were wiped out early on by my son and his various exploits in his first three years of life. Like the time he hit his head and needed a CT scan (the doctor told us to watch for "jerky uncoordinated movements"...he was 12 months old - ALL the movements were jerky and uncoordinated), or the time he burned his hand in a fire pit, or the time he broke a tooth wrestling with my dad, or the time he licked a printer cartridge (for your own reference, poison control said he would be OK), or the time he found a knife and wandered around with it (jeez...just reading over that list makes me want to call social services on myself). So whether it is by attempting to induce a stroke or a heart attack by pushing my various buttons, or by trying new and unexpected ways to kill themselves, my kids are trying to kill me. But I gotta say, most of the time, I really enjoy being on their hit list!