That moment when you get the distinct feeling that your day is going to get far worse before it gets better. Yes, you know the feeling, don’t you? I can practically feel you all collectively nodding your heads in agreement as I write this! Call it Women’s Intuition, a 6th sense, or just Murphy’s Law doing its thing… but we have all been there.
There are those random days where everything goes right – days where it seems that the Lord himself has parted seas of traffic, given all the green lights, and miraculously turned nasty children into angels. These days we can count on one hand. But days like today, they seem to happen a little more frequently. These are the days that you can find me hunkered down at my computer, praying that the roof doesn’t cave in on top of me while I eat a block of cheese.
Why are you eating a block of cheese, you might ask? Because it’s a beautiful aged Vermont white cheddar that deserves to be consumed before we leave for the holidays, and because my day has sucked, and because I exercised already, and because…. Cheese just fixes things, OK? If you have to ask, then you will never truly understand.
To start this gorgeous morning, my youngest accidentally recorded the infomercial for the 21 Day Fix program. I, in all my wisdom, took this as a sign that I was being called to exercise. I now realize that my kid is just button-happy and that my calling was really to eat aged cheddar. However, I found this out the hard way.
Lucky for me, there was a video sampler on YouTube allowing me to try one of the work outs for free. It called for light weights… I have 15 lb weights. Surely that will work, right?
Wrong. This chick had me doing explosive jumping jacks for a minute at a time (10 second breaks in between rounds), followed by high knees (to help you catch your breath, she says!), lunge kicks, and a slew of other equally ridiculous things that made me feel like punching her in the face. I quickly realized that 15 lb weights were not going to work, but the only other thing I could find were family-sized cans of soup.
Only here’s the thing. Soup cans and sweaty hands lead to terrible things. Things like throwing a soup can mid-jumping jack and having it smash through a cup of milk sitting on the counter, sending white liquid everywhere. I literally finished my high knees in a puddle of lactose before my legs refused to cooperate any longer – sadly this was not the last puddle I would find myself standing in today.
While gathering towels to clean up the milk, I hear the voice from YouTube informing me that this was a sample of the 21 Day Fix EXTREME program, NOT the regular program. And, hello, if you know me at all, you know there is nothing extreme about my physical capabilities (although my husband would argue that I can do some extreme Mom-Dancing… but I don’t think that actually qualifies).
Me and my jelly legs cleaned up the spilled milk as best as we could, all the while cursing the Campbell’s soup company and YouTube and children that play with remote controls. But no matter how much I scrubbed, I couldn’t get the sour smell to go away. How long had that milk been sitting there, anyway? I began to follow my nose from room to room, and it led me to my toddler, standing happily watching Paw Patrol in the living room. I lifted his shirt and went to pull his diaper back to see if he was, indeed, the source of the rank odor. And when I did this, I submerged my fingers into a squishy pool of warm, orange baby crap.
Trying to keep my gag reflex reactions to a minimum, I ran to the kitchen sink and began scrubbing my fingers. Sadly, my nail beds still smell like I had a manicure in a sewage treatment facility.
I went back to Wyatt, only then noticing the pooey footprints across the floor. Obviously he had sprung some sort of ridiculous rectal leak because the amount of juices that had run down his legs and apparently soaked his socks informed me that he may need to see a doctor to get rehydrated! I swiftly began to strip him before he could take another step. My rubbery legs sank to the floor as I wrestled him out of clothes, depositing smears and globs on everything as we went. I reached for the wipes and went through half the pack as my son joyously found great pleasure in playing with his poopy weenie and then clapping his hands, sending bits of diapery remains everywhere.
Everywhere.
My hair, his hair, my clothes, the carpet, the bench, and the two toys he grabbed that were sadly within reach of where I had tackled him – all now brown. It was only when I reached for a clean diaper that I realized with great dread that whoever had changed his last diaper in the living room had not restocked the supply we keep on the end table.
This is person must be shot.
The only solution was that we were just going to have to make a run for it. I needed to get the baby upstairs and to the bathtub before he set off another bomb. However, my dogs kinda have a thing for poopy items. I don’t know, they’re messed up in the heads or something. But knowing this prevented me from making a quick run for it with Wyatt, because I just couldn’t leave the demolished diaper and crap-filled clothes on the floor in the same room as my mentally challenged canines.
Noticing that Wyatt was re-engaged with his television show, I took 5 seconds to run his poopy laundry downstairs and tossed them into the washing machine. Wyatt used those 5 seconds to pee all over the floor, naturally. In that moment it became apparent that my son and I were not moving towards the same goal for the day. Not at all, really.
I soaked up the pee as best I could and took my sticky, naked baby upstairs… stairs that now presented themselves as a tremendous obstacle due to that dang work out! I asked Wyatt very sweetly to not go to the bathroom on Mommy as we carefully took one stair at a time, but he just smiled at me and said “Peepee, Peepee!” over and over.
Finally in the shower, we both watched as the water running off of us turned a dingy shade of brown as flecks of stuff dripped off of us and moved towards the drain. And as I stood there, I thought of all the things I was supposed to have been accomplishing this morning. Things like packing, laundry, writing, making phone calls for work, and paying our bills. Things that weren’t getting done because of explosive jumping jacks and explosive baby butts.
I looked down at my sopping wet toddler. He was happily playing with his bath toys and wiping soap bubbles on my legs. I realized that for whatever reason, the plans I had for my day were not going to happen. At least not all of them. But hearing my littlest love saying the word “Bubbles” over and over again as he nodded his head up and down in excitement somehow felt better than folding laundry.
I thought of how often I go through my day with my own agenda. I make my plans and to-do lists. I focus on what I want to get done. Yet, sometimes God says, Wait a second… I know the plans that I have for you today…. Plans that will give you a hope and a future.
Being crapped on wasn’t part of my hope for the future, granted. But after going Christmas shopping on Saturday for Isaac, our love that was taken from us, and wrapping all those gifts on Sunday so that we could send them out, I think God knew that I needed to spend time in the bubbles with my little one.
The next time you find yourself crying over spilled milk, remember that there are plans for you that are meant to bring hope. You just need to push through the crap to see it. And eat a block of cheese, because it really does fix things.
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