Ready, set – let’s go!

Published 6:11 pm Tuesday, June 3, 2014

I was at the pharmacy, dropping off a prescription Tuesday when the pharmacist asked the girls, “Are you enjoying your summer?”

With polite manners, they replied, “Yes, ma’am.”

I spoke up. “They are, but Mom’s not.”

The pharmacist laughed and said she remembered a saying that talked about how much we drive our kids around. I couldn’t remember it exactly, so I Googled it. This isn’t the right one, but it was close: “A mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car for ever after.”

How true is that, right?

I mean they got dropped off at vacation Bible school by 8:30 a.m. – after a trip to the dollar store to get what they needed for their Good Samaritan boxes. (I wasn’t the only parent there, either!) – picked up by 11:30 a.m.; taken to Walmart for prescriptions and more Good Samaritan stuff – then home for lunch, where I left them. We were supposed to pick up dance recital photos after 5 p.m. It’s iffy if we’ll make it at this point.

I swear I’m in a constant state of going – about three times more than during the school year – and it’s only the first day of summer break. We’re going so much we may have to change the name from summer break to mom break, because that’s what I’m going to need to get through the next three months.

I see all those moms posting photos on Facebook of the their fun projects and trips, and I’m like – “Look I bought them enough Toaster Strudel to last the week and ice cream….AND I remembered the cones! Yeah me!”

I don’t know how stay-at-home moms do it. Truly. All it takes is for one day to make me realize that I am so happy to have a job that I love. Not that I don’t love my children. I do. It’s that I love them living more. I know if I was at home with them day-in-and-day-out, there would be bloodshed.

There is hope on the horizon. In one short year, the oldest will earn her driver’s license. Then it’s on. But until that time, if you need me, I’ll be the one waiting at the red light. Wave when you come by.