My Life

I woke up one day staring at a plus size bathing suit, wondering who it belonged to. “I know that I am not that big,” kept running through my mind. Everyone knows that mirrors in a store do not represent actual size, so you can imagine my surprise when I tried it on and it fit snug just like in the store. With lots of children running around me all day one tends to neglect personal space. The day went down hill when an extra high wattage light bulb illuminated the fact that my hair was becoming gray in areas that I could not hide. I vaguely remember the woman my husband married almost thirteen years ago. Charming, kind, beautiful and, yes, thin. Well the weight changed along with me resembling a haggard, abrupt, frumpiness. It is not that I do not love my life; I just did not know it would go quite so quickly. I really believed that I would always look and feel young. Now it is all about the little people. When they are not running through the house breaking everything in sight, then they are sick. Literally the only time they stop is when they are under the weather or passed out on the floor of their bedroom after listening to countless books, final potty trips, and drinks of water. It is a toss up if I actually get a break when they are sick or if the entire time is spent holding them while they throw up on me. It’s not uncommon to hear one of them dare the other to do some life threatening stunt. Yeah, and did I mention that five of them are boys, so those dares are really a challenge to the child listening to the proposal! I spend most of my time maintaining order and trying to instill in them that impulsiveness could land us all in the emergency room.


Would I trade a second of my time caring for our precious little people? Never!! I would be lying, though, if I did not share that after the dog had escaped three times in one morning, the puppy had eaten something valuable, my toddler threw his breakfast on the floor, the battery on the phone was dead after forgetting to charge it, along with the four and seven year old getting in a water fight, while a neighbor rang the door bell announcing that someone just ran over the mail box – all this happening before nine a.m. Yeah, you can just say, “Take-out,” because by the end of the day I am either in tears or wanting to rip the gray out of my hair instead of dyeing it. I was definitely a consumer who bought into commercials that family life was exactly like the Clorox commercial where mom has freshly washed clothes hanging and chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. Reality is semi-burnt cookies and mildewy clothes still in the washing machine after two days. (I remember to re-wash them when they start to smell………………) The kicker was when my husband came home and said he would love to buy a BMW motorcycle in a recession with a recent pay cut. REALLY!