We’re showing January on the calendar and despite my historic dislike of New Year's resolutions, I had actually started 2024 optimistically holding a daily planner stuffed with my resolution-fulfilling exercise and housekeeping commitments, scheduled and ready to go.
And then, because I had made God laugh by telling Her my plans, everything went delightfully to heck the afternoon of New Year’s Day.
There’s no ignoring the elephant in the room that laid waste to the List Formerly Known As My Plans. The "elephant" is our adorable 3-year-old grandson’s luggage; he is staying with us unexpectedly while his mother (aka my daughter) spends a few weeks dealing with preterm labor.
He’s doing really well, when you take into account that his own New Year’s plans went to heck and that his time with his doting parents has been temporarily reduced to an hour or so a day over FaceTime. We’ve worked out an understanding: he has accepted that he can’t watch television all day and I don’t argue if he wants to spend the occasional morning in his pajamas, because like the song says, there’s no trying to reason with Three-Year-Old Season.
The dogs, who have long understood that they will not receive treats at the table, have now realized that their wildest wishes have been granted and there is an unpredictable yet bountiful rain of scrambled egg, pizza, Rice Krispies, waffles and chicken nuggets falling like manna from heaven. They’re not clear on how this benevolent despot came to sit in the kitchen, but they’re ready to start a new religion if it will keep the Fruit Snack Waterfall flowing.
The adults in the house are now way too invested in Paw Patrol story arcs. Case in point: Toddler’s uncle just pointed at the television and gasped, “Oh, no, Chickaletta, don’t do that!” because Lord knows we’re all hanging on the safety of the mayor’s chicken. We’ve also spent entirely too much time arguing the physics of this hot-rotation show: the team of intrepid dogs is apparently the entire emergency response solution for Adventure Bay and Adventure City (that was established canonically in Paw Patrol: The Movie), yet they all deploy for minor issues like cleaning up skunk spray and helping Mayor Goodway train for a race. Zuma is tragically underutilized, and Chase is horribly overworked, especially since he’s clearly dealing with some unaddressed PTSD (again, canonically established in Paw Patrol: The Movie).
Like everything that’s going on in this house right now, if you know, you know; if you don’t know, there’s no way to explain it. In a few weeks you can stick a Baby Bjorn fork in me, because then I will be well and truly done.
My optimistically-scheduled exercise is still sweaty cardio; it’s just morphed into serving as the personal assistant to a kid who, like Van Halen, wants all the brown M&Ms removed from the bowl before he’ll even think about showing up for his gig and has more play dates and appointments this week than I did all last year. My vow to Swedish Death Clean the house has turned into a race against sticky floors and an astonishingly large pile of laundry.
I should know by now that whenever I’m in trouble I should just yelp for help; I think the Mighty Pups can handle those floors.
Elizabeth Evans is a local mother, wife, daughter, sister, former stay-at-home mom, former work-outside-the-home mom, former work-at-home mom and a human resources consultant.
