You know when…
… you return home from traveling with your kids from a seven hour car ride after being gone for three weeks and have a plethora of suitcases to unload and unpack the next day and large clothing piles form and toys are strewn throughout the house as you try to put them back but it’s impossible with two kids who need something to do while you clean and sort three week’s worth of mail so you let them play and the house seems to just rotate being messy and you’re also on the phone with the insurance company for about an hour as you continually apologize for the noise and then you also need to go grocery shopping because your fridge is bare but it’s also heavily snowing outside but you have to go anyway so you load up the kids and one of them wants nothing but milk the moment you strap her in and the other one hates staring at the back of the seat so you listen to varying tones of whine the whole way there and then upon arrival you almost get blown over by the wind and your kids both want to be held to be shielded from it so you end up carrying fifty-five pounds of squirmy kid while you hobble inside and once in the toddler continues the milk whining so you scour the store for a single serving of milk but there is none and you know you will pay for it if you give her chocolate milk so you decide on a juice smoothie thing which probably has more sugar than the chocolate milk but now it’s too late because she has spotted it and now the baby is hungry so you throw some crackers at him while you baracade down the aisles throwing things in the cart not taking a second glance at a single thing you pick up because you must. keep. moving and you finally make it to checkout and the kids are like howling hyenas so you chuck things at the cashier who, hallelujah, is a super-bagger and you’re out of there in no time and as you exit the store you drop your wallet in the middle of the street and scramble to pick up all of its contents just as the paper towels fly out of your cart and a boy feels bad for you and picks them up and you thank him as you run to your car and once home you try putting groceries away with a baby crawling up your leg and a toddler sitting in front of the fridge insisting on only playing in that spot and you also need to get dinner going so you throw a pot of water on the stove and manage to make macaroni, open a can of mixed veggies and pluck some grapes off the vine as your toddler takes two bites and calls it yucky while you can’t feed your baby fast enough over his constant whine meaning to shovel it in faster and it’s never fast enough and in-between spoonfuls you keep trying to put groceries away and also fold laundry and once that’s done you have to pin each kid down to wipe their faces off and as you clean up dishes more toys are played with and pieces are taken all over the house, again, and you pick them up as you brush toddler teeth, change poop, and start warming baby bottle before putting jammies on two deadly alligator rolling children and once those are on the toddler wants more milk which you try to explain how liquids before bed make you pee and she just won’t give up so you feed baby the bottle and listen to why toddler should be able to have milk too and then the bottle is gone and you pick up more toys and thank the Lord it’s now bedtime so you begin the bedtime routine of tucking in dolls, reading a book and putting all three blankets, not two, not four, it must be three blankets on the toddler and you kiss her goodnight as the baby crawls up your leg so you take him to his room and finish getting him ready, put him down and walk out of the room and that’s when you let out a huge sigh of relief and sit down.
And that’s where you’ve been for the last forty-five minutes as your feet continue to tingle and your neck aches and football is on the TV but you’re too tired to get up to change it.
So you don’t.
Yeah.
That’s tiring.
You know?
Oh the joys of aftermath travel.
