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By some miraculous alignment of the stars we had a free weekend.

No baseball or softball games.

No birthday parties.

No somewhere we had to be, no something we had to do, no nothing.

It was going to be sunny and warm and we were going to take advantage of a beautiful, wide-open weekend with the excitement of limitless possibilities.

And then my daughter woke up Saturday morning with a 104˚ fever and stomach ache.

That’s why this framed quote by John Lennon - that I live with great irony all too frequently - stands on my entry way table:

Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.

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After seeing Night at the Museum this last winter, my kids were itching to go to a natural history museum and check out its fascinating offerings for themselves. I knew just which one to take them to.

Growing up in the Bay Area it was grade school field trip tradition to hop on a BART train and head to Golden Gate Park and San Francisco’s Natural History Museum, Steinhart Aquarium and Morrison Planetarium all in one location.

So when the miraculous vacancy in our upcoming weekend appeared, I pounced on it staking claim to an impromptu (well, as impromptu as this busy family can get) educational excursion.

When I proposed our own family field trip, my kids squealed with delight. My mom heart swelled with pride over their choice of cultural expansion over another cookie-cutter kiddie flick. (Can you say Alvin and The Chipmunks?)

Hubby was a little more reluctant, but inevitably on board. “I guess if this is the only weekend we can do it, than we should do it.”

“Our weekends are booked until 2009.” I held up a calendar so covered it penciled, penned, highlighted, blocked off and circled notations it looked like it could’ve been Oprah’s schedule – totally missing the overbooked forest for the trees.

“It would be nice to stay home for once though,” Hubby mumbled before giving the universal team player sign – a double thumbs-up and plastered on smile.

I was so proud of my brilliant idea and spontaneity, plus my children’s obviously refined tastes in recreation. I boasted to every mother I bumped into about our upcoming plans.

That is until one mother told me, “You might want to check the California Academy of Sciences website. I believe the museum’s closed for reconstruction until September.”

I like to think I would’ve checked the website before we left for hours of operation and pricing to perfectly synchronize our trip. But if I’m being honest, despite trumping me with her genuine cultural supremacy as opposed to my faux refinement, this woman just saved me from having a hornet’s nest of disappointed, annoyed and highly agitated road-trippers sitting in front of a closed San Francisco Natural History Museum this last weekend.

That and a 104 degree fever.

Once again, life saved me from myself.

The alarm goes off, I roll from bed

Time to wake up those sleepy-heads.

But first I look in the mirror and ask, “Are you ready?”

I take a deep breath, try to keep the nerves steady.

I promise today I will not be a fool

I will calmly and expertly get those kids ready for school.

But no sooner than said, it all comes undone

Not a person got up, no daughter, no son.

So the shouting begins: “Quick get dressed, no, not that shirt!

Can’t you find one uncaked with dirt?

No, I haven’t seen your other shoe

You tell me now the field trip form is due?

Cereal, waffle, peanut butter toast or oatmeal?

Nothing’s not a choice, you won’t leave without a meal.

Turn off the TV and eat already!”

There goes the promise to keep the blood pressure steady.

“You’re still not dressed, your hair’s a mess!

It’s 40˚ out you may not wear a sundress!

What do you want in your lunch today?

Or rather, what would you like to trade or throw away?

Have you brushed your teeth and brushed your hair?

Please don’t tell me those are yesterday’s underwear.

Quit your bickering, scooch over, make room

More than one person can fit in this bathroom.

Have you looked at the time? C’mon let’s hustle

Why is it every morning you can’t move a muscle?

Do you have your lunch, your homework too?

Are you kidding me going out with that ‘do’?

Go grab your sweater, you forgot your backpack

Too bad, now we’re leaving with whatever you lack.

No time to walk, scooter or bike

Jump in the car it’s time to drive.”

Hope there’s no cops, I’m not driving great

But no kid of mine is gonna be late.

I steal a quick kiss and a hug while I can

Too soon they’re embarrassed by this and a minivan.

“Good-bye! I love you! Have a nice day!”

All is forgiven, I call out and wave.

Ready to pull away, I shift my car into gear

And slowly a smile spreads from ear to ear.

Though the day may start off not as it should be

I point my car home and the glorious silence waiting for me.

One a.m. hour of chaos I am willing to pay

Thank the Lord for education and the 7-hour school day.

 © Kelli Wheeler 4/08

I have two kids. Carbon copies of Hubby and me. It’s uncanny actually. It’s like looking at 3-D pictures of yourself walking around from thirty years ago (more like twenty in my case, really).

It never ceases to solicit comments from strangers when they notice it. But it can lead to a little awkwardness when someone says, “She/he is so cute! She/he looks exactly like you!”

In all modesty (really, this time), Hubby and I run into this often. What do you say when someone points out in one observance that your kid is darling and looks exactly like you?

Hubby sees it that he has just gotten a stroke for his extreme handsomeness and the great fortune of his child to have inherited his superior genes.

I take it as a delightful validation that someone else also sees what I see and a nice little unintended compliment that I still got it.

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Hubby likes to point out our daughter not only looks exactly like me, but she’s got my hard head and stubbornness too.

I counter that he has afflicted our son with an inability to sit still and an extreme aversion to change. Plus, he can’t discount his own healthy dose of stubbornness passed to each child.

It should probably be noted that neither of us have ever left the marital bed in a huff because both of us refuse to concede the bed. We’ve had the Great Wall of Animosity in between us, but neither has ever surrendered the soft and cozy castle. And in the end, we lay down our arms, join forces (hubba hubba) and all is well in the kingdom again. (As long as he remembers it is the Queen who runs the castle).

 But, I digress.

So, if I were to tell you a little about my seven year old daughter, I could probably use one of two aliases. I could call her Little Carbon Copy (LCC) or I could call her Teenager in Training (TNT) which I think is self-explanatory. Unfortunately, I think the second is a more accurate description of her and a perfectly symbolic acronym.

Don’t get me wrong, she is extremely sweet, smart, creative, athletic, and talented, I could go on. But as I used to tell my popular 5^th graders when I was teaching: You can use your talents for good or for evil. It’s your choice, but everyone likes a hero. Stay away from the Dark Side.

I can also think of a couple varied aliases for my first born eight year old son (not Irish twins, just seventeen months apart). Many times we call him Two Cent (TC) because he is always interjecting what he feels is his superior eight years of wisdom, plus he’s constantly popping off some jabbing comment to everything his sister says. Now that I think about it, he could be TNT version 1.0.

Actually though, my son’s favorite T-shirts are pretty good descriptions for him. One says I do all my own stunts and the other This is what talent looks like. He’s got lots of little dude friends who admire that he is an incredibly gifted and natural athlete. He’s got a lot of little girl friends because he is sweet and a cutie-patootie. And just like his daddy, he seems totally unaffected by it all. He’s Popular and Cool, but Modest and Natural – he’s PAC MAN.

So, I have plenty of cute, funny, aggravating, interesting, relatable TNT and PAC MAN stories I am eager to share (much to my children’s future embarrassment). We all do, right? Because that’s one of the many joys of parenthood -- the collection of wonderful life stories you live out simply because one day you rolled across the cozy, comfy castle and said to Hubby, “Let’s make this more interesting…”

Someone please tell me – When did I become a short order cook?

At what point did I begin substituting quesadillas for enchiladas, instant mashed potatoes for baked potatoes, and buttered noodles and cheese for WORLD FAMOUS HOMEMADE spaghetti meat sauce for people under five feet tall?

Why have applesauce and sugar-free Jell-o replaced salad and mixed vegetables as a side dish?

Have I really become the It’s Not Worth Fighting About spineless caricature of myself staring back at me in the mirror?

Where is that woman who swore her kids would eat whatever was put in front of them even if they had to sit crying in their green beans all night?

Come on! I’m not talking lima beans and brussels sprouts, lintel bean soup and carrot salad (carrots, raisins and mayonnaise, oh my!) that I used to have to choke down under threat of no dessert.

It’s a turkey burger for goodness sakes! You smother that thing in ketchup like everything else and you’re good to go. Pretend it’s in a nugget form and wolf it down.

Fine. I’ve got a hot dog on the stove.

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Not since my newborn/Groundhog Day times of prepare breakfast, feed breakfast, clean-up breakfast, rinse off baby, immediately repeat for lunch and dinner have I so thoroughly hated the question, “What’s for dinner?”

Some days it is the straw that breaks the mommy’s back.

Especially after all you’ve done for your family that day has left you so spent, you don’t have one brain molecule left to figure out what to do with that jar of pickles, three flour tortillas and one hard boiled egg left in the fridge.

Nothing is worse than facing a whining, hungry child armed to shoot down whatever meal pops out of your mouth with, “Eww. Not that again.”

But actually, worse I think, is when you’ve carefully prepared, lovingly crafted, even blew kisses over the fabulously healthy AND delicious meal you skipped watching Oprah to make for your family and a little pipsqueak at the table has the nerve to say, “This smells funny. Can I have chicken nuggets instead?”

As if a nugget of remnant chicken parts could replace my finely crafted offering of sustenance.

No. It’s time to take a stand. Go ahead and take a big gulp of milk and wash it down buddy, unless you want to be sitting over a cold dinner all alone with the sound of the dishwasher in the background and the short order cook – I mean Mommy – on strike.

I’ve got a dirty little secret.

I’ve bought more underwear to delay doing laundry.

In my defense, the kid was ripping through chonies like you wouldn’t believe and obviously needed more Bob the Builders in his stock.

Speaking of stock, I suggest buying some in Shout stain remover because it is a mother’s best friend. I go through the stuff by the gallon.

Which leads me to the question -- Why should the person who makes only 10% of the dirty laundry be the one to wash it?

Exactly.

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So I catch myself saying the other day after my daughter’s softball game, “Don’t put that uniform in the dirty clothes. You’ve got another game this week. And I’m not doing laundry.”

Sounds bad, doesn’t it? It gets worse.

She was about to diligently drop the dusty uniform and stinky socks in the laundry hamper but I told her she might as well leave it on the floor so she wouldn’t mess up the clean clothes in her drawer.

Not one of my Mother of the Year moments.

Then there was my son’s baseball uniform. Hubby was in charge of getting his baseball pants. He comes home with only one pair! The kid has at least two games a week! The odds of Son trotting out onto the field in bright whites just went down dramatically. I sent Hubby back for another pair.

I’m sorry, but there’s a lot of stuff going down around here to make this family run like the well oiled machine that it is. Doing single loads of laundry for an average of four games a week would bring the show to a screeching halt.

I do laundry in mass. It’s just how I roll. Huge piles of bleaches. Mounds of lights. Masses of darks. Mole hills of delicates. It can take me two days to get through it all. (Don’t ask me about folding and putting it away – let’s just say Hubby and I have an inside joke that his clean underwear are in the “drawer.” That’s code word for unfolded in the laundry basket.)

Could my life be easier if I broke it into more frequent manageable loads? Maybe. Would it be more efficient? Probably. Do I want to do laundry that frequently? H-E- Double Hockey Sticks NO.

Instead, you can find me out front playing catch with the kids. Because in my house a good mother means happy kids and stinky socks.

I’ve sunk to a new low. I tried to pull off the cleaning lady’s work as my own. When Hubby got home, he gushed how nice the house looked and I took full, unabashed credit.

But he caught me.

Poking his head in the hall bathroom he immediately called my bluff. “Oh, wait. Today was Cleaning Lady Day wasn’t it?”

I still clung to my sinking ship, determined to go down with it. With mock indignation I countered, “I resent that! What makes you think I didn’t clean that bathroom to sparkling perfection?”

His reply was mocking laughter the rest of the way down the hall.

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I used to be one of the few, the proud, in my mommy’s playgroup who did not have a cleaning lady. However, I wasn’t proud of the fact that my house looked like it.

Then one day, scrub brush in hand vigorously cleansing the toilet, grumbling about little and big boys needing to improve their aim, I snapped.

As my sweet mother-in-law (MIL) and Hubby were heading out the door to shop at my favorite you’ll-never-guess-what-I-got impulse buy store (without me!), MIL asked me a normally unloaded question.

“Is there anything we can get you at Costco?”

Without lifting my head out of the toilet I growled, “Yeah. A cleaning lady.”

Later, when Hubby returned from the store he very seriously pulled me aside. “I tried to tell Mom you were kidding, but she is insisting on paying for a cleaning lady to come once a month to do the kitchen and bathrooms.”

I felt like a bad puppy who just got smacked with a rolled newspaper for biting too hard in play. Like a puppy, I didn’t know whether to wag my tail or hang my head with this mixed message.

Unable to hold back his smirk, Hubby threw me a bone, adding, “I told her you’d be totally against it, because of the sheer joy you experience cleaning bathrooms.”

After punching Hubby in the arm for perversely stoking my Catholic guilt, I did a happy dance all around the house and spit out some good tongue wagging raspberries at the bathrooms I would never deep down scrub again.

Did I not tell you Costco is the greatest? Who knew they sold cleaning ladies there too?!

larger view

Alright, crack the knuckles, here I go. My inaugural post.

It's going to brief though because I have to go clear cut the forest growing on my legs before dashing off to the Staff Appreciation Committee meeting.

I volunteered for this group thinking I was finally going to get some recognition for all the jobs I cover around here in this job of Mom.

Apparently, this is only school staff appreciation and not a Mother's Day celebration as I thought.

Anyway, so there I was making pancakes that look like Mickey Mouse (with some inbreeding) for my kids' breakfast. I'd probably just yelled at them to get all their crap off the dining table because it was time to eat. I was starting to fume because no one was listening.

I was also getting ready to call my daughter's bluff on her claim of washing her hands by doing the feel for wetness and sniff for soap test.

That's when Little Miss Handwash Faker out of nowhere announces to me, "Mom, you get an A+."

"For what?" I asked wondering where this was going, highly suspicious of a diversionary tactic.

"For loving your kids," said my angel with halo askew.

Sniff. I knew I shouldn't have retold this without a Kleenex.

Enjoy the journey.