The scene opens on a balmy Tuesday morning at 5:15am. The Woman struggles to shut of the blaring alarm at her head, inching slowly off the bed, headed for the coffee pot. Never mind that it's her day off, and it's been nine hundred days since she slept in. No, never you mind that. The woman lays her head down on the kitchen counter and waits, watching her only heart's desire pour into the cup beneath the Keurig machine. She closes her eyes, briefly, until the sound of dripping is done. She adds her cream and sugar and takes her first sip. It's amazing.
Heading to the bathroom, she glances at herself in the mirror and realizes that she has hardened shredded cheese stuck to her cheek, because she lay her head on a counter that she forgot to wipe down before she went to bed very, very late last night. It's alright. Don't worry. She has her coffee. She sighs, deeply. It looks as though someone neglected to replace the roll of toilet paper again. It's alright. She'll take care of it.
The woman dresses herself. Sports bra, shorts, tank top, flip flops. She pulls her hair back into a pony tail and heads for the truck. Once outside, she realizes that it is 87 degrees with 70% humidity, and her hair does this funky curly-only-at-the-sides of her head thing that makes it kind of look like she is possibly growing wings above her ears. The good (?) news is, this is as cool as it's going to be all day. The bad news is, her family has been rocking the One Vehicle With No Air Conditioning venue since this time last summer. It's all good. Her husband bought her one of those Spray/Fan combo things. She's covered. (In sweat. At 5:30am)
The woman drops her husband off at work and heads back home, hoping against hope that she will have a chance to shower when she gets there. And, also, to refill her coffee cup. She is about ten miles from her house when the first cup of coffee decides it's done it's job for the day and fills her bladder almost to bursting. Ten miles. So close, and yet.......there's a tractor, slowly making his way through morning traffic.....finally able to pass him, she turns at the blinking yellow light and low and behold! What do we have here?! A train, stopped across the tracks. Two LONG miles from this woman's driveway. She does a careful, three point turn to make her way back to the busy highway, drives another mile down and narrowly escapes being smashed to little, tiny pieces by a semi-truck. Finally, blessedly, she is home.
Waiting at home for her are her four children two Grandpeeps, and her doggie. She thinks they will still be asleep. She is wrong. GrandBoy #1 comes around the corner, sleepily rubbing his eyes, and asks for breakfast. Daughter #3 comes down the stairs and smiles and hugs her mother and begins to question the plans for the day, specifically whether or not said daughter will be going to the pool. Daughter #3 thinks that maybe her sweet Mommy didn't hear her the first seventy-nine times she asked, so she continues to ask about the pool while GrandBoy #1 continues to ask for breakfast. The woman just watches the coffee hit the bottom of the cup and says goodbye to all of her showering dreams. She takes her first sip when GrandGirl joins the party. GrandGirl has urgent diapering needs. GrandBoy decides to try to locate a specific Matchbox car in a large bucket FULL of Matchbox cars by emptying the bucket into the middle of the living room floor. Daughter #2 makes an entrance, drops to the middle of the dining room floor and stretches out in a Zombie-esqe fashion, thus ensuring that GrandBoy #1 and GrandGirl will be asking several thousand questions about WHY this is happening. Doggie now has urgent bathroom needs that will wait for no Zombie, Daughter or Grandperson. The woman takes him to the yard, careful not to let him down to run around Zombie Daughter or the GrandPeeps, because Doggie has a social anxiety disorder which causes him to be unable to EVER sit still or stop licking the faces, noses or ears of the GrandPeeps, which makes the GrandPeeps VERY unhappy, indeed.
Outside, Doggie greets his Yard Cat friends (there are 5), relieves himself on the tire of the woman's truck, spots a bird off in the distance, and pretends that he has a shot in hell at catching the bird and takes off. The woman takes a deep breath and decides that, yes, despite his tendency to get on a lot of nerves, the family would, in fact, miss him greatly. She follows after him, barely able to see his tiny rear end disappear into the bean field. She tracks him down to the fifth row of beans, where he is laying claim to seventeen plants for his ever-growing empire. The woman whistles, threatens, cajoles, and begs her Doggie to come with her back to the house, where even at half an acre away, she can still hear the GrandPeeps asking for breakfast. The Doggie eventually decides to follow her back, stopping at every 10th blade of grass along the way, making a valiant effort to remind the other animals in the kingdom that Doggie's Empire is vast and well-tended. They are halfway back to the house when an insect that the woman is pretty sure is a first cousin to Mothra lands on the back of the woman's leg and bites/stings her. Doggie misinterprets the woman's simultaneous leg slap/arm wave/terrified screech as an "I Really Want To Play And Chase You Around The Yard Dance" and behaves accordingly. The woman has no time to mourn the loss of muscle control in her lower extremity, she has to act fast and grab a hold of the Doggie before he makes his way into the next county.
Back at the house, the woman examines the bite/sting on the back of her leg and can find no evidence of the bug bite whatsoever, ensuring that NO ONE, ever, anywhere, will believe what she just experienced. She hangs her head.
She feeds the GrandPeeps and Daughter #3, dresses the GrandPeeps, redresses herself, packs diapers, wipes, her purse, her phone and Daughter #3 and heads back outside into the humidity. GrandGirl goes into her car seat. GrandBoy #1 goes into his car seat. Daughter #3 (still asking about pool plans) goes into the passenger seat. Daughter #2 was supposed to have been coming along, but has since made her way back to her bed. (Hopefully. Possibly she only made it as far as the floor next to her bed. The woman forgot to check.) They drive, with no air conditioning, down the highway to the woman's Mother's house. During the journey, the GrandPeeps ask twenty-seven million times where the group is heading and why they are heading there. The woman stops answering. Daughter #3 is not as jaded as the woman, and therefore, continues to give the same answers to the same questions at the top of her lungs to the GrandPeeps, making the woman think that Daughter #3 should possibly have her head examined before starting fourth grade this year.
Upon arriving at their destination, the Woman must now engage in a battle of arms, legs, and car seat buckles to unload everyone and get them to the door. The woman's Mother answers the door in her pajamas. This is especially strange to the woman, because it is now nearly 8:30am, and the woman's Mother has a long history of preaching the benefits of early rising to the woman. The woman makes herself a cup of her Mother's coffee. The two of them take GrandPeeps and Daughter #3 outside to play, because Mother's yard is shady and it's only Almost Unbearable. While playing in the yard, a bug makes it's way into the woman's coffee and drowns. GrandBoy #1 finds this hysterical. The woman, less so. At 9:45am, they all head inside for a drink and to enjoy some good, old-fashioned air conditioning. The woman's Mother tells Daughter #3 and the GrandPeeps that there are cookies in the cookie jar, which is sitting on the counter. The woman tries to say No Thank You to her Mother, on behalf of the group, however, the Mother won't take no for an answer and insists on feeding cookies to the GrandPeeps before 10am. A move which assures the woman that her Mother is no longer the woman who raised her. In the woman's experience, her Mother believed that snacks containing sugar should be consumed by children between 2pm and 2:01pm.
The woman, once again, engages in Epic Car Seat Battles to place the GrandPeeps into the truck to leave, though it is made slightly more difficult by the sugar-induced spasms the GrandPeeps are now experiencing. The woman now realizes that she needs to put gas in the truck. She stops at a gas station, and because she is educated, and it is hot outside, she removes GrandPeeps from the car seats, takes them inside to pay for the gas, ends up buying half of the gas station, takes them back outside, returns them to the car seats, and heads for home. All the while, Daughter #3 has not stopped asking about what time the pool opens and when they will be going and who will be going with her. The woman is drenched in sweat and feels as though she may need to pull over to vomit before reaching her driveway. The GrandPeeps are in danger of falling into a sugar-induced coma in the backseat. They make it safely inside the blessedly cool house. Daughter #2 is fully awake and functional. Also, Son has now joined the land of the living. His first question to the woman is whether he will be able to go to the pool as previously planned.
The woman makes lunch while washing dishes and scraping hardened cheese off the counters. While Daughter #2, Son, Daughter #3, and the GrandPeeps eat, she folds a load of laundry. She finds that the Universe has rewarded her for doing the laundry of people who are perfectly capable of doing their own laundry by leaving $7 in her dryer. She is appropriately thankful. She shares the message on Facebook. While updating her status, GrandBoy #1 enters the room and informs her that, "Fun time is OVER." The woman laughs at him, and is promptly sent to time out. The fifteen seconds of 'time out' is blissful for the woman. It is exactly what she needed. Fifteen seconds to reflect on her life as a parent, grandparent, wife, daughter, maid, chauffeur, the list is endless. The woman is then informed that GrandGirl has another urgent diaper issue that requires immediate attention.
The woman tracks down Son, who has retreated to his video game paradise, and Daughter #3, loads them up and takes them to the pool, handing them her hard-earned $7 Laundry Lottery Winnings for snacks. Daughter #2 is left in charge of GrandPeeps. When she returns, the woman finds that Daughter #2 is asleep on the couch, as is GrandBoy #1. GrandGirl looks to be nearly dormant. The woman silently celebrates. She does not know what to do with this windfall. Shower? Nap? She decides to type up a quick blog entry.
