Another Note to Self

When you decide to have a morning coffee/internet chat with two far-away friends, make sure your kids don’t have access to an open box of Cheerios.

I’m just sayin’.





And then, just as I was vacuuming up the last Cheerio, there was a knock on the door.

Impeccable timing, as usual.

I took one look down at my wrinkled pajamas and thought of my bed-hair and smeared makeup, and ran and hid in the laundry room. It turned out to be the service men coming to program our phone. Which meant they needed access to the laundry room, where apparently our phone lines are kept. (You can run but you cannot hide. For long, anyway.)

So Andy (thank you, Lord, that Andy was home) had the guys go in the kitchen while I ran upstairs. And, in full accordance with the state of our house, the kitchen looked like it had been hit by a bomb.

And Drew was running around wearing only his underwear, the girls were still in their jammies, and Adelaide was screaming her head off, still mad about me repeatedly moving her out of the way of the vacuum cleaner.

(And, on a side note, every time anyone comes over in the morning for something house-related, I look like a train wreck. I must have some sort of deep abiding vanity that needs huge doses of humility from such continual and mortifying occasions.)

I heard one of the guys tell Andy that he’d e-mailed me about coming over and asked if I got it. Why, no, I did not. I was too busy vacuuming up an entire box of spilled Cheerios to check my e-mail.

Back upstairs, I tried to grab a quick shower so eventually I could go down and feed my cranky kids their breakfast. It was only after I was done I realized we were out of towels in the upstairs bathroom. Yeah, figures. I quickly dried off with two hand towels so I could calm Adelaide, who had firmly planted herself outside the bathroom door and continued to scream.

Aren’t you glad you stopped by? I’m so glad we could offer you such a wonderful picture of the tranquility that is our homelife.

But, as Andy said, it could have been worse. He could have already left for work, I would have had to greet the service guys face-to-face in my pajamas and still been dealing with a Cheerios-clogged vacuum. I said, “well, I wouldn’t have answered the door.”

“Yeah, but Drew might have thrown it wide in welcome.” True. That would have been worse.

Or all this could have happened before I’d had my coffee. That really might have done me in.