Tired Mom Diary – Chapter 2 – Nobody Told Me There Was Spirit Week
Schools send important emails at 8:47 p.m. on Sundays.
SPIRIT WEEK!!!
Three exclamation marks. That’s how you know you’re fucked.
Monday: Pajama Day.
Tuesday: Crazy Hair Day.
Thursday: Favourite Animal Day.
Friday: Team Colours.
Nora, who was supposed to be asleep, appeared in the hallway.
“I’m going to be a narwhal.”
Ben looked up.
“How about a cat? We have cat ears.”
“Narwhal.”
“We have a whole cat costume.”
“Narwhal.”
She went back to bed.
Apparently, the meeting was over.
Monday was easy. Pajamas. Finally, something the school and I agreed on.
Tuesday Ben did crazy hair with eleven elastics and a fork.
I asked if the fork was clean.
He said yes.
I washed it anyway.
Wednesday, Nora climbed off Ben’s lap, walked across the entire house, and found me cutting cucumbers.
“Mom, can I have a popsicle?”
“One.”
She left.
Ben stared at me.
“She was literally sitting on me.”
“I know.”
“I know where the popsicles are.”
“I know.”
Neither of us knew what to do with that information.
At 10:43 p.m., I was making a narwhal.
Grey hoodie. Paper towel roll. Silver duct tape. One of Ben’s socks stuffed inside the horn.
I googled narwhals.
Apparently, the horn is a tooth.
I have a university degree. This is what I’m using my brain for now.
Ben appeared in the kitchen.
“You know she can just wear the cat ears.”
“I know.”
“Want help?”
“No.”
“You’ve been doing this for two hours.”
“Forty-seven minutes.”
He looked at the glue gun.
“Okay.”
At 11:48, I burned my thumb.
The narwhal was magnificent.
My thumb was not.
At 1:10 a.m., I was reading a parenting forum.
One woman said she’d stopped answering questions her husband and kids could answer themselves.
Apparently, after two weeks, everyone learned to function.
I thought, Jesus. Imagine being that lazy.
Then I spent twenty minutes worrying whether the narwhal horn would fit in the car.
Thursday morning Nora saw the costume and screamed.
The happy scream.
The one that makes you forget you were awake until midnight gluing a paper towel roll to a hoodie.
She ran around the kitchen shouting, “I’M A WHALE WITH A TOOTH!”
Ben said, “Technically, it’s the left tooth.”
She looked at him like he’d discovered electricity.
At school, there were six cats, two dogs, a dinosaur, and one narwhal.
The teacher asked, “Wow! Who made this?”
“My mom. While I was sleeping.”
A woman beside me said, “You’re amazing! I just gave mine cat ears.”
She looked rested.
I hated her for approximately eleven seconds.
Then I wanted to be her.
THINGS APPARENTLY REQUIRING A MOTHER
- Permission for a popsicle while sitting on Dad.
- Finding a slipper. It was on her foot.
- Explaining why we can’t bring a live animal for Favourite Animal Day.
- Knowing where the scissors are. Everyone knows where the scissors are. Nobody looks there.
Friday was Team Colours.
We don’t own anything in team colours.
“I’ve got it,” Ben said.
Nora came downstairs in his old hockey jersey.
Number 14. Down to her knees. Sleeves rolled six times.
She looked like a tiny hockey player who’d lost custody of her equipment.
She loved it.
She wore it to school.
She wore it home.
She slept in it.
The narwhal is still in the dryer.
This morning Ben brought me coffee and looked at the costume.
“You know I’d have just sent her in the cat ears.”
“I know.”
That’s why I didn’t let him.