Setting: Our week has revolved around a mountainous, all-consuming, impossible deadly deadline (make that five), which has resulted in a continual assembly line of putting out fires (which simply set more fires from the friction in our family). So perhaps I shouldn’t have found it surprising that the crescendo of our week of wildfires should consist of nothing less than the wildest of fires to date. And while effort and exhaustion were both on my scoreboard, with a 3:30 bedtime and a 6 AM rise and fight, I still found myself facing the flames, as my final fleeting sparks of hope to complete the final project, shower off the shmuzz of sleepless nights, get my little people presentable, and drop off, prior to the final deadly deadline, stopping the insanity, was now closing in on the truly impossible point when…
Me: “Stapler! STAPLER! Where is my stapler?”
Enter Small Sweet Confessor: “In timeout.”
Me: “What?”
SSC: “I put your stapler in timeout.”
Me: “WHAT!?!?”
SSC: “He wanted to pinch you, so I put him in time out.”
Enter Flashback to a recently suppressed mortifying moment in Mommyland (of which I have an entire storage unit in my unconscious), when I was trying to take on the impossible (a.k.a. every day), when The Tiniest attempted to take my “desk toys” as a means of dulling the boredom of neglect. Now at any other moment of clarity I would never have allowed a toddler access to office tools that can easily be transformed into weaponry, when mixed with terrible twos. But at that particular moment, I “didn’t hear him” (wink, wink). And when the afternoon emerged without injury, I convinced myself that my passive parenting was perhaps passable.
Now I found myself suddenly at war with my prior passivity.
Me: “Where did you put the little stapler in timeout, Sweetie?” (suddenly switching to pandering, with the hope that my prayers for project submission might still be granted.)
SSC: “I dunno. I forgot.”
Me: “Hmmm…can you think? Where did you put Mr. Stapler? I buttered, as I frantically tore apart my home office (a.k.a. my entire home).
SSC: “I dunno.”
And the fire consumed me, as I became the bipolar antagonist who cycles through begging, bribing, pandering, and pleading, and ultimately falling to the ground, curled up in a ball, and surrendering.
Enter thief (or office supply disciplinarian…depending on your opinion of the role of my mini antagonist.)
SSC: “Hey Mama. I found him. He said he promises not to pinch now,” setting the coveted stapler aside his flailing caregiver.
Interjection: Sometimes I wonder if the Lord views my life as some sort of sitcom, highlighting the hilarious juxtaposition of moral lessons in submission and self control paired against, well…my life.
So I uncurl, brush off the cheerios once left for the littles in an attempt at breakfast, thank the thief for his confession, and compose myself enough to pack in the troops for Mission Completion: Project Submission.
To clarify any inquiries from my inevitable content editors, I didn’t forget to include a final chapter on the success of showers or necessary preparation of the little people prior to meeting with my professional mentors. You see, today’s sitcom was entitled “Priorities”. With that said, if any of you saw a mob of wild beasts being herded through the city the other afternoon, with the panicked leader clutching a briefcase in attempt to masquerade as “professional”, well….
I suppose next time, if you have a problem with our presentation, I might suggest that you just put me in time out. Maybe I’d finally learn those lessons in submission and self-control. Regardless, I wouldn’t mind getting lost for a little while anyways.