Today started like any other day – woke up to my husbands alarm at 6am, someone’s small arm draped over my head and feet in my back. I fell back asleep and woke 9 minutes later to my husband’s alarm again (the length of the snooze button). I heard the fishing boats moving from one catch to the next and the sound of the kookaburra’s laughing at the seagulls.
The morning had begun. Groundhog day. Looking through bleary eyes, I see my son stretching on his top bunk – can I have a shower with you Mum? Sure, just like every other morning. I do manage to sneak in 15 minutes of solitude doing my morning yoga watching the sunrise over the harbour.
What do you want for breakfast? I ask the kids. I resist from saying the same as yesterday and the day before but I brightly say ‘Weetbix, rice bubbles or corn flakes’. ‘I want toast’. One of them says this every morning and my standard reply is ‘not until you have had cereal’. Protest, protest ‘OK, I’ll have weet-bix.’ ‘Good choice’.
‘It’s 7.45am, time to put brush your teeth, do your hair and put shoes on’. No answer. ‘OK it is 7.47am and I have already asked you once to brush your teeth, do your hair and put shoes on’. 7.49am – I explode, kids scatter and we now have 1 minute to get in the car. Luckily I have allowed for an extra 8 minutes for the usual ‘Do as your told’ talk.
Kids are in position, I back out and we are on our way to school. Just like any other morning we drive.
9am – coffee with my friend. Child Number 3 asks, ‘Can we go now, I have no one to play with and you won’t push me on the swing’. ‘Just play a little longer while I talk to my friend’. 5 minutes later, ‘There is still no one to play with, I have dug holes in the sand already and I want you to go’. Oh the same old.
11am – ballet. I am not a fabulous ballet mum and would rather sit in the coffee shop next door and read the paper (or answer 20 emails on my day off) than go to the park and watch someone else’s child ask their mum to push them on the swing 6 times before she leaves her stimulating conversation with a friend to push her child.
12pm – take lunch to hungry husband who has been at work since 6.15am and is doing some ‘very important work’.
1pm – washing, vacuum the spots, search the internet, walk the dog, playing, playing a little more and pushing my child on the swing.
2.49pm – Drive to pick up the big kids. Kids had a great day at school. ‘can we watch tele when we get home?’, ‘can we play the computer when we get home?’. The answer is always ‘no’ – everyday so it is the same answer followed by a protest and more of the same answer. ‘Not until your homework is done, bags are unpacked, you have had some afternoon tea’.
3.55pm – leave for swimming. The thought of putting the kids into their swimmers, sitting there watching them drown again and nagging for me to get in, nearly kills me all day. We get to swimming – I go in with the kids and play crocodile snap, drown the noodle and how high can you go and I actually enjoy it. That happens every week.
5.55pm – leave swimming pool with 3 grumpy, hungry kids and wonder which child is going to turn the night ‘into custard’ first. Custard turning = fighting with each other, fighting with mummy, taking someone’s toy or belonging, crying because sister flicked brother on way into car or called other one a dumb head. It always happens. Swimming nights always turn into custard.
6.20pm – 8.20pm arrive home to cook dinner, make lunches, eat dinner with husband (if he makes it home), clean kitchen, read stories and put kids to bed, each with a kiss and the same bed time cuddle as we had last night.
8.20pm – now what? The kids are in bed. Oh fold washing, finish kitchen, sweep floors, take dog for a walk, tidy playroom, more net searching, fill in school notes and maybe some TV.
These tasks = ground hog day and after almost 9 years of performing these tasks, they happen the same way each time. Sometimes with fan fair, sometimes with anger, sometimes with love and other times with such joy you feel like you are bursting. How can a day like this be such a roller coaster? It should be routine and plain sailing but never are our days that! I didn’t mention in the middle, I am experiencing mother guilt for yelling at my daughter this morning, friend guilt for not seeing my friend for weeks despite trying to, business envy that I can’t think of the best idea to use my skills, work guilt that there are 70 unread emails in my inbox because today is my day off, wife guilt for having another ‘headache’, food guilt for putting vegemite on the kids sandwiches again and not what was advertised in the Women’s Weekly for ‘the perfect school lunch’, navy wife guilt for wearing thongs on the base again when I dropped lunch off, mother envy of how she can work in a professional, career job, make lots of money and teach her kids to read at the same time… the list goes on and on.
Would I trade it for the world? Well maybe the ‘yelling at my daughter bit’ but that is just a little bit more ‘mother guilt’.
How do you get through your groundhog days?
