As chasing after three kids somehow didn’t keep me in shape, I decided to take up swimming. Hair slicked beneath swim cap, I stopped mid-lap, gasping and clutching my sides, strained my eyes through my goggles and found the entire Simsbury High School swim team. Suddenly I was seventeen and back in the THS parking lot, learning to drive as the football team rolled in.
Two decades later, it doesn’t get any easier.
Yesterday I washed four loads of laundry, plucked 101 toys off the floor, scrubbed eight sets of muddy foot and paw prints and vacuumed the contents of our sandbox from the floor. Enter my mom, who scanned the kitchen and advised, “If only you’d do a little bit every day, you’d be able to keep up with this mess!”
At which point do mothers lose their grips on reality? I’d like to know how much time I have left.
I figured out my kids are 25% Hungarian, 16% French, 12.5% Italian, 6% German, 3% Native American, 12.5% Lithuanian, 12.5% Russian, 6% English, and 6% Irish. They will be the only kids in their class to bring in a goulash/ French fry/ cacciatore/ bratwurst/ maize/ sliziaki/ vodka/ English muffin/ corned beef and cabbage casserole for “Celebrate Your Heritage” week. Anyone got the recipe handy?
At the end of Bushy Hill Road is a sign with a picture of a white Maltese reading “LOST: SCHMOOPEY. REWARD!” It’s just a theory, but I have to wonder if some of these lost pets are really so lost after all. How much crap do you suppose Schmoopey tolerated from neighborhood dogs Butch, Spike and Killer before he finally packed his bags? Run, Schmoopey, run!