Shower Wars

At my MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) meeting this week, we did a hilarious exercise during which the entire group of about 75 women stood in a circle and took turns admitting some of the crazy things we resort to as stay-home-moms. When nothing really surprised me, I realized then that I'd completed the transition from career woman to housewife. I heard everything from perpetually living out of laundry baskets in order to avoid folding and putting laundry away, to serving Bomb Pops for breakfast and popcorn for dinner, to parking the kids in front of the TV with sweets one afternoon to go get frisky with the husband upstairs. Hey-oh! But the prevailing theme in all of our admissions was a gross lack of personal hygiene. Days without showering, weeks without shaving, covering greasy roots with baby powder, wearing to bed the same clothes you woke up in that morning (and then wore all day), not realizing until 3:00 pm that your teeth haven't yet been brushed. Yes, my friends. The Domestic Arts is a very dirty business.

I can fully respect and relate to these veritable woes.

That being said, I'm a Type-A personality and one of my "things" is bodily cleanliness. It may not happen by breakfast, or sometimes even by lunch on a bad day, but come hell or high water (and sometimes both), I'm getting a full scrub and polish -- complete with lip gloss and mascara -- before much else of importance gets done. Call it vanity or what you will, but I'm incapable of feeling good unless I look my best. I will forgo food, caffeine, sleep, possibly even AIR if I must choose between any of these things and my blessed shower.

This morning was no different. And so I offer you a glimpse into the reasoning (read: madness) behind the Frumpy Housewife Syndrome and how it's so easy to fall into, and so hard to escape.

I spent a good twenty minutes this morning rocking and patting my 19-month-old to sleep for his morning nap. He normally sleeps from 10:30-12:00, and I use that time to shower and primp, do my college homework, and complete any chores that would otherwise require me to leave him unsupervised if he were awake. This is a sacred and coveted hour and a half of quiet, childless, self-indulgent ZEN. (Did you catch that, husbandfolk? Showering, doing homework, and washing laundry in peace are self-indulgent for this gal.) Were I less rigid and more go-with-the-flow, it might not be such a catastrophe when this routine gets interrupted. Especially with how often I'm forced to improvise, you'd think I'd be somewhat used to it by now. But alas, I'm a control freak, remember?

After transferring the sleeping toddler to his crib, I tiptoed to the bathroom, eased the door closed and started the water. I hurried out of my clothes, making a mental checklist of all the things I needed to accomplish in my precious ninety minutes. I stepped my left foot into the tub, and then I heard it. The shrieking, sobbing wail. Not your average discontented baby cry, but the I'm being simultaneously attacked by giant bumblebees and angry clowns cry. Without pause for thought, I whipped a towel around myself and bolted to his room. There he stood, arms outstretched, dramatically yelping, "Up! UP! UUUUPPPPP! Mama! Mamaaa!"

CRAP.

At that point, I had two choices. I could stand there and try to pat him back to sleep, or I could relinquish my 'Hour of Power', make do with my day-old hair and just let him get up. You know where this is going...

Almost thirty minutes and one numb arm later, I finally managed to pat his stubborn little bottom back into sleepy oblivion. Holding my breath on the stealthy trek from his crib back to the bathroom, I did a facepalm when I realized that the shower had been running the entire time. Perfect. The hot water was already waning when I finally got in, so I mumbled several unladylike things under my breath and frantically soaped and scrubbed. Four minutes in, I was just beginning to rinse the conditioner. And wouldn't you know it, that little bugger started screaming again. MUCH louder this time (if that's even possible).

No! This is not my life! I want a refund!

Of course there was no quick solution to be found. I was smart enough to turn the water off this time, quickly squeegied as much of the conditioner out of my hair as I could, and did a once over with the towel. I'm sure most of you know how difficult and frustrating it is trying to pull dry clothes over a wet body. In my irritation and haste, I'm surprised I didn't tear my pants seam from seam as I hopped around in that ridiculous yank-yank-shimmy-dance. My sopping, snaky hair immediately soaked my shirt and yesterday's mascara ran freakishly down to my chin. I was the misbegotten lovechild of Gene Simmons and Medusa.

Mostly dressed, still dripping, and all kinds of crazy-eyed, I bolted through the bedroom door just as his hysterics were peaking. I don't know if the sight of me helped or made things worse, because he positively lost his marbles then. I'm thinking that one traumatic event may have actually ruined nap time for the rest of his life.

I was so angry and thwarted afterward, I took a vow of silence for two hours because I was afraid of what might escape. I also forced myself to hug and kiss all over that rotten, adorable little shower spoiler. In my rational mind, I know it won't matter in ten years. It's just very difficult to remain rational in the moment. (Who said anything about control freaks being rational, anyway?)

And the point of all this is, what's the point? When you're always fighting a losing battle for a moment to bathe yourself like a normal human being, it's less wearisome sometimes to just not fight it. To throw your hair in a ponytail and simply avoid the mirror as much as possible. And if you didn't know, Rule of Motherhood #972 is this: on the day you feel so worn by the battle, so zapped of energy to face even one more day of warring for five minutes to shave your legs... on THAT day, when you give up and skip the shower, skip the homework, skip the dishes and instead sit in anticipation on the edge of the couch, waiting for the imminent cry... on that day, the baby sleeps peacefully.

So the next time you see a haggard mama at the grocery store in her sweatpants with little ones in tow, give her a knowing, encouraging smile instead of a judgmental scoff. You can bet she's doing the best she can.

Perspective

Alright. I've been in a funk. My husband might tell you that's an epic understatement, but he's not here and this isn't his blog and I have first say here, darn it. But I'll admit, I have a brooding personality, and when things don't go my way, I pout. Lately, a lot of things haven't gone my way.

I'm cranky that I can't keep up with the laundry. Loads make it through the wash and dry cycles, but then sit - and wrinkle - at the "folding station" in our home office. Sometimes they don't even make it that far, and on any given morning I can be found frantically digging through baskets of wadded clean clothing in search of something, anything, that won't make my first-grader look like a latchkey kid when he walks out the door. Doesn't matter if it smells like Tide when it looks like I just pulled it out from a year under my mattress.

Furthermore, I'm frustrated that I have lost all sense of personal space and privacy since leaving the corporate world to stay home with my two boys. I used to take coffee breaks when I wanted. Take a casual stroll on my lunch hour. Meet friends for lunch dates, run errands that didn't involve carrying sippy cups, snack baggies, and an armful of toys to keep little ones entertained just long enough to make it through a check-out line. Now I'm gulping my coffee frantically at 6:45 am because I know that when the baby wakes up at 7:00, a coffee mug becomes a mere target for grabby, curious fingers. The youngest is a clingy little lover, fifteen months old and so infatuated with every cell in my being that for me to take a five-minute shower is both a tragedy and a personal attack on his sensibilities, met with fits of tears and heaving and looks that implore, How COULD you? Every task that requires the use of both my hands has now been relegated to the one hour during which he naps; dishes, making the beds, laundry (ugh), blogging (so you see why it is so infrequent), homework...

Ah, homework. Did I mention I'm in school full time? I do what's necessary for the family and take all of my college courses online. While this may sound convenient, being able to study/test/submit assignments from home (and it is for many purposes), it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to separate academics from home life. I'm a student that requires silence in order to retain anything I read. Having children is anything BUT silent, so study time is put off until everyone's asleep at night. This is also about the same time I need to prop my own eyelids open with toothpicks just to stay conscious, so I'll read a paragraph of Computer Programming, get to the end and realize I have absolutely no recollection of what I JUST finished reading. So I'll start again, the lines of text growing blurrier with each pass, and if I weren't so tired I'd probably feel despair by my fourth unsuccessful attempt to comprehend that one paragraph. It's just not a good system and is a constant source of stress. I honestly don't know how they haven't booted me out of school yet, and I curse myself daily for not doing the smart thing and attending college right out of high school.

I'm also annoyed at how impossibly far we have to make the dollar stretch, especially living in such an affluent part of the country. Everyone's jet-setting and private-schooling and golfing and cocktail-party-throwing and redecorating, and I feel soverysmall as I'm scouring Wal-Mart for sales on store brand frozen meat. Going from two incomes and one child to one income and two children is a bit of a shell-shock. Every indulgence in life is immediately swallowed by remorse and worry about how the money could be better spent, or saved. It's just hard to keep your head high, and even harder not to feel envy or resentment. Mostly, it's hard not to have self-pity. This isn't the life I asked for. Is it?

This morning, I was deep in the mire. I'm still only half-recovered from a head cold that I don't have time for, and the baby was whiny, and I looked around the house, strewn with toys and stupid, stupid baskets of unfolded laundry. And I had to get OUT. I put the baby in the stroller, hid my dark circles behind a pair of large sunglasses, and set out.

It was windy today. Eighty-five degrees in October, and tremendous gusts were creating swirling showers of bright leaves. I'd forgotten how noisy Fall is with its rustling changes. I decided to walk the few blocks down to the historic part of town to mull over life's difficulties at the local bakery. On the way, I forced myself to think of one thing to be thankful for at each crosswalk. At the time, this was no small feat. The baby thought it was hilarious to fling his sippy cup from the stroller every twenty feet and scream for me to fetch it. I, on the other hand, found this to be the farthest thing from hilarious on what was possibly my grumpiest day of the year. As I bent over for the umpteenth time to swipe his cup from the sidewalk, I noticed how dirty my shoes were. Or rather, how loved they were. My favorite shoes. Laceless Converse low-tops, tried and true.

And then it came to me. Grace.

It's 85 degrees in October. Bright blue skies, flurried with rainbowed leaves. I just left the house -- our beautiful house, that we own -- with a little guy in tow who loves so very much with his little baby heart that he doesn't know how to exist without me. I'm walking down my favorite street, in my favorite shoes, en route to the bakery where I'll sip coffee and share a chocolate croissant with my little one. I'll pay the $4.35 with money that my husband earns so that I don't have to work, and can instead not only stay home to raise our sons, but pursue my education, no matter how frustrating it can be. I'll snap photos on my smartphone to remember this precious, momentous occasion. I'll text with a fast and dear friend, the same friend with whom I sat on the patio just last night and shared a bottle of wine as the sun sank -- Oh! -- while the men bathed our babies. And tonight I'll rest easy in my pillowtop bed, next to a man whose snoring has never sounded sweeter to my tired ears.

It's funny how the overlooked, taken-for-granted things can be so truly important, and the seemingly big ordeals can be so trivial after all.

Just a matter of perspective.