Slapdash

I was lucky to get in a catnap before making dinner tonight. I’d just finished a busy day at work, getting ready for a deadline, and was still waiting for word of an after-hours software deployment that I had to do a quality check on. I put my phone nearby and laid on the couch, blanket pulled up, eyes closed to reduce any more stimulus into my aching head. My son was in the next room, being reasonably quiet while on a marathon gaming session that had started when school sent him home for vomiting up his lunch. I wanted to force him to get up and take a break, to do something else with his extra free time, but I had no energy to be a responsible mom. My husband was sick and didn’t want to move at all, but he did get up in the middle of my nap to help our son install a new Minecraft add-on. Their chatter roused me, so I opened my eyes and checked both my work phone and personal phone. At work, the software update was ready for me to test, but I’d have to do that later. On my personal phone, I checked the recipe I was planning to make and decided there was still time for it. My nap had been short but refreshing. Had it been longer, I might have been bound for a McDonald’s dinner.

In the kitchen I chopped, roasted, sauteed, simmered, and pureed. While food was cooking, I washed a round of dishes so the pots and pans I was using wouldn’t add to a dirty pile. There was still a stack of soiled pans on the stovetop from last night. I quickly grabbed the one that was easiest to clean, scrubbed it, and started heating it to make my son some breakfast sausages. He wasn’t going to touch the beets and celery root puree I was making for our main dish. He doesn’t eat vegetables. I know that he should, and I don’t really believe in cooking a separate meal for a picky kid, but I accept reality and I like him to be fed. While the sausages cooked, I logged into my work software and verified what I needed to, then sent a quick email to colleagues. I loaded up a plate for my son with sausages, white bread, and a packet of fruit snacks. He ate without complaint while his dad and I had hearty veggie bowls.

After dinner I forced myself to sit down and relax, but kept thinking about my to-do list. It’s the start of a new month. The mortgage and most other bills get paid automatically, but I need to sit down with a spreadsheet and my budgeting app to see how much money we need to allocate for everything. We have a short stack of paper invoices to pay from our kid’s recent doctor and hospital visits. My husband graciously took those from me, but I need to follow up to make sure they don’t get buried in the pile of old mail on his desk. Oh, and speaking of doctors, my kid’s school called two weeks ago and said that his EpiPen was expired, so I need to drop off the new one, some morning when I have time to walk into the front office instead of letting my son out at the curb. That, in turn, depends on me remembering to grab the EpiPen during the morning rush at home, when I’m too busy to remember my own medication. I try to prioritize getting my son his chewable multivitamin and probiotic supplements, on which I spend 60 dollars a month to enhance his limited diet, and of which I end up throwing away many because I forget them despite my best efforts and then suddenly it’s a new month and the subscription service has automatically mailed us a new packet of vitamins.

The pharmacy texted me today with a medication refill—the medicine I frequently forget to take. My eye doctor texted me several times over a period of weeks, reminding me to set up my yearly exam, then gave up when I forgot to respond. I still haven’t called them. My eyes are okay, as far as I know, but I am in my forties now and probably should keep current on all things medical. I’m trying to take care of my health in a world where time is short, my kid sucks up a ton of energy, and the bad people are in charge. I want to eat lots and lots of junk food, but I’m trying to dial it back. I schedule Pilates classes during my workday and mentally track the extra time away from my desk so I can put in my whole 40 hours. I have a fitness watch that expects me to walk 8,000 steps a day; any less than that, I’ve read, and you may as well not be exercising at all. I’m typically achieving fewer than 4,000 a day. I can’t find the time to do more. I also can’t find the brain space for the daily pelvic exercises that are supposed to help my incontinence.

Our vet’s office says the puppy is due for her annual exam. We can tell from the clacking on the wood floors that she also needs a nail trim. The cat needs his claws trimmed as well. Who’s going to remember to take them to the groomer on a Saturday? Probably me, eventually. But weekends are also for getting the garden beds ready to plant, cleaning the week’s grime and dust from household surfaces, making quality time with my child, grocery shopping, and catching up on reading and resting. I also have self-imposed commitments. I volunteer with a local political campaign, which requires me to do a couple hours of bookkeeping every week. Then there’s my writing. I am dashing this off the night before it’s “due”, because home has not afforded me the time or mental peace to write anything in the past week. Even from my recliner, writing this post, I’ve kept one eye on the clock and one ear on my son, because I am the parent who worries more about keeping him on a schedule.

When people talk about mothers’ mental load, this is it. It’s project managing our own lives and our kids’, keeping track of schedules and milestones and prerequisites and costs. It’s remembering to take a package of meat out of the freezer for dinner the night before you need it. It’s having a constant, almost-irritating sense that a task needs doing, and sometimes needing to search the database in our minds to recall what that thing is. (I’ve just remembered that we need to find an orthodontist for our six-year-old, but first confirm that his dental plan actually covers orthodontia.) For working parents, of course, this is on top of our full-time paying jobs.

I don’t hate being in this role at all—I’m Type A, and I like to be busy. When I cook an awesome dinner after finishing a solid day at work, I feel like Superwoman. A superhero doesn’t ask to be repaid for their good deeds. For the most part, I don’t either. I’m just saying I really deserve the vacation coming up in a few weeks.