Yesterday afternoon, I found myself saying out loud in a moment of despair, “What is it that happens between the hours of 4-7 p.m. that it’s a vortex of time and a vaccum of disaster?” It’s become my least favorite time of the day. Carter and Kiefer get off the bus at 3 p.m. and we do a snack and I always let them play first thing. I think all children need to play more. Unprogrammed playtime is a dying art. But when we start the homework machine at 4 p.m. (or at least attempt to start it) the wheels fall off. Or maybe it’s more like a train wreck.
Carter’s typically self-motivated and will willingly sit down and do his homework and often is finished in 20 minutes. Kiefer, on the other hand, is pretty much the opposite. I have to physically sit down with him, often pulling him back into his chair or fetching the pencil that he throws in frustration or snagging his blanket from him so he’ll get his thumb out of his mouth to write with his right hand. This goes on for a while.
Oh, and did I mention dinner prep? The two always collide. Other, more organized, better prepared moms would have dinner made ahead of time or militarily mapped out on a spread sheet for the month complete with new recipes to try and a shopping list! But this disheveled, disorganized mom looks into the freezer at a bag of frozen chicken breasts at about 5:30 p.m. and wonders what’s for dinner?
If you’ve ever seen the opening scene to the movie “The American President” with Michael Douglass as the president – it is the essence of what I’m feeling as I stare into my freezer. Instead of staring at frozen food, in the movie, the President is entering the West Wing being followed by a band of advisors coaching him on names, his schedule, political threats, edits to his upcoming State of the Union address and policy recommendations and debates as they walk along and enter the elevator. Then as the elevator doors open, you see him greeted by the panic stricken face of his African American female press secretary who says to him, in that tone of voice that only a ticked off African American woman can give, “You give me this at 5 o’clock? Five o’clock’s news time! You don’t give me this at 5 o’clock? What am I supposed to do with this at 5 o’clock?!!?” That’s exactly how I feel. And it only gets worse from there.
Griffin and Fletcher are usually very good about playing together but during the time when Mommy needs to be sitting down to keep Kiefer focused on math or spelling or reading or whatever, of course, that’s when they need me. They come to me with policy changes or political threats or reports of terrorist attacks and they don’t realize that it’s news time for me. We’re awaiting nuclear chemical weapon implosion melt downs if I don’t prepare dinner by 6:30 p.m. But they just don’t seem to understand the magnitude of the ticking clock.
Oh, and did I mention the state of affairs? As in the condition of my kitchen floors and countertops? I sometimes regret that I made the choice long ago to raise creative, imaginative kids. Seriously, do you know how messy that is? But it’s too late now. Now they are creative, imaginative kids and that comes with some serious baggage. For example, last night at about 5:15 p.m. when I still hadn’t started anything for dinner (and in the back of my mind wondering if we’d already had chicken nuggets this week for dinner? Could we do it again tonight?) I was kneeling on the floor picking up a million scraps of paper that Griffin and Fletcher had been entertaining themselves cutting (and I think a few locks of Griffin’s hair was in that pile, but that’s a different story for a different blog) and then I see the state of the kitchen table is covered at all 8 place settings with homework, rainbow loom boxes, rubberbands and patterns, my ipad that Carter’s been using to video himself creating a new rainbow loom pattern, then there’s library books, school books, piles of papers from the day’s school work and the current homework that’s being avoided by Kiefer. I sit down for a little more tudoring and homework coaching and encouraging and before I know it it’s 6 o’clock. News time. Still no dinner. Finally, at 7 p.m. dinner was served. Grilled cheese, left over meatloaf and salmon and asparagus for those over 40. Nuclear disaster averted for another day. We’ll see what tomorrow holds.