The second week of school is coming to an end, kids are exhausted, extra-curricular activities have either started or the dreaded midnight crash-your-computer-trying-to-sign-up for everything at once lest you waste your work day in a line-up wrapped around a rec complex hoping your child will indeed be told they can be a poly-wog for the second time around. I can feel the lice in the air.
The weather isn’t helping.
My outfits are laughable. I caught a glimpse of myself running out the door today in jeans, a t-shirt, a fuzzy, black sweatshirt and running shoes. Really Liz, really? Hasn’t this look kind of been done to death…by you…..every September……and never ever looked even remotely presentable?
I find myself channelling Rebecca Howe from Cheers at least a dozen times a day. “There is some crap up with which I will not put!” Like after walking into a bathroom and finding the toilet full of toilet paper, what lies beneath may or may not be more toilet paper. Has it been like this all day? Or how about children fighting over what Barbie should wear when it should be noted, Barbie is probably most comfortable in her birthday suit. Maybe the next time someone shouts because their towel has been “rough dried” I should explain the clothes are being hung outside to save money for their future educations by not using the dryer and further, hanging those clothes outside may be the only time I see the light of day and breathe in a few gulps of fresh air before scrounging for Terry-the-Fox donations and sifting through summer hat bins hoping to find a couple of fall-ish ones.
And I’m sorry Ontario government for not renewing both my youngest daughter’s health card and my middle daughter’s passport but I’m pretty sure spending a few extra minutes on the accuracy of child number one’s pizza order form to ensure she does NOT get pepperoni on it trumps your important government documents.
Someone typically interrupts me with one of those pressing questions that simply can’t wait another minute for an answer, “Mommy, what if we didn’t have any hands?” “Do the animals die first and then we eat them or do we kill them so we can eat them?”
The good news is Ellie had her first art class this week. Her first project was dipping toilet paper in buckets of water mixed with glue (based on what I saw in our own bathroom she may have been working towards brownie points).
She was thrilled and when I entered the studio at the end of her first class, she was carefully trying to fill in the area on a painted canvas with purple as she told me her teacher was allergic to “white space.”
Ellie was thoughtful when she asked, “Do you carry an Epi-pen like my cousin?”
