Because I deeply love my children, I will be appearing in a bathing suit at Wild Waves tomorrow even though the high temperature is expected to reach only 73 degrees.

Sometimes, I remember that I am a supporting cast member in the story of my children’s childhoods.  True, I am the star in my own life and believe me, if tomorrow were about me, I would lounge around reading a book, not schlepping up a set of stairs with a giant inflatable raft balanced on my head or shivering around the “Lazy River” attempting to avoid the waterfalls.  Tomorrow, I will be appearing as “Mother” in their memories.  And I’m pretty sure that my current weight will not be the thing they remember.

Then again, maybe it will and I will be mortified in twenty years when my grown children say, “Oh, remember the time Mom took us to the waterpark and she was SO FAT?”  And then they will make faces of disgust and I will be mortified.

But I hope they will only remember having fun.

We returned home from church at about 2:00 p.m.  I immediately set about cleaning up my kitchen.  Once the dishes were all washed, I peeled potatoes in preparation for dinner so we could have mashed potatoes with the roast cooking in the Crock Pot.  Then I decided to cut up the cantaloupe.  Then I thought I should clean and cup the tops off the strawberries.  I followed that by washing and chopping a head of iceberg lettuce and two bunches of Romaine lettuce.  I boiled three eggs.  Then, as a final flourish to my exemplary homemaking, I decided to bake banana bread using my Martha Stewart cookbook.

My husband suggested that I go to a movie while he took the kids to football conditioning.  We talked about it and I decided on a 5:00 p.m. showing of “The Proposal.”  (I had to work tonight at 9 p.m.)  Perfect.

While the bread was baking, I rushed upstairs to help my daughter clean her disaster of a bedroom.  It was truly horrible, but we managed to find a place to stash all her stuffed animals.  My secret hope was that I would find her missing Nintendo DS.  Which I did.  Because I rock.  It was zippered into a small backpack which was shoved into the bottom of a toybox under a dozen stuffed animals.  It’s been missing for weeks, maybe months.

The stove buzzer rang.  My son hollered upstairs to let me know.  I ran downstairs, pulled out the banana bread.  It looked perfect.  Then I lost my mind.  Completely.

I lost my mind because I looked at the clock and it was 4:30 p.m., the time I had intended to be already on my way to the movie.  So, without further ado, I got out a cooling rack so I could let the banana bread cool.   Then I stupidly decided to remove it from the pan by dumping it upside down.  The loaf fell into a steaming clump of banana bread onto the rack.  The bottom of the pan retained the bottom of the bread.  Oops.

Then I realized I hadn’t boiled the potatoes to accompany the roast.  In fact, I had no idea it was so late.  I’d been lost in a time warp of stuffed animals and old stickers and markers and doll clothes and blankets.

So, in one fell swoop, I lost my Suzy Homemaker badge.  I ran upstairs to inform my husband that I didn’t get the potatoes cooked or mashed and that I ruined the banana bread but just leave it because it might be okay anyway and bye I have to run or I’m going to be late and sorry I didn’t get dinner quite done.

The movie (“The Proposal”)  was good.

When I got home, I cut the banana bread into chunks.  I made mashed potatoes.

Another weekend gone in flash.  And I handled it with my usual measure of grace and competence.

This is our first week of “no school” but it’s been full of activity.  My teenagers leave for camp on Saturday (at 7:00 a.m.!) and I have the responsibility for gathering and packing the odd assortment of items on the packing list.  (Cowboy outfit?  Mask and masquerade outfit?  Outfit which can get so dirty it can be thrown away?  Formal outfit?)

It’s almost like sending them away to a pageant or something!

Also, the camp is in Canada, so because of the laws regarding border crossing, they each had to get a photo identification card at the Department of Motor Vehicles–which is swamped because of the border crossing rules–adults in our state can get an “enhanced” driver’s license, but only at certain DMVs . . . which are the same ones which issue photo identification cards.  When I entered the building with my four children, our number was 74 . . . and they were on 34.  To my utter shock, the kids were well-behaved (and incredibly friendly to an older lady who passed them hard candies–“Nips”) and the boys got their cards within ninety minutes.

I’m vaguely worried about them going to camp for a whole week.  They’ve never been away from home for that long.  I worry that everyone at the camp will be “cool” and they will be excruciatingly uncool and mocked and tormented.  I went to camp only once in my life and found it a socially unpleasant experience.  Plus it was boring.  The camp my boys are going to is gorgeous and luxurious (!) and their youth pastor and friends will be there, too.  But I worry anyway.  It’s in my job description.

Meanwhile, my younger kids are out of school and endlessly bickering.  My daughter has perfected her ability to burst into convincing tears at the slightest provocation.  Today, I said, “What is wrong?” and she lamented through her tears, “Zachary said I was disrespectful and disobedient.”  Earlier in the day they were fighting (she crying, him looking nonchalant) about whether or not she stepped on an ant or a rock.  “Zachary says I stepped on a rock, but it was an ant!”

I might not survive the summer. (Did I mention that last week my son kicked a basketball into the kitchen window?  And that replacement window panes cost $145?)

I have washed so much laundry this week but most of it is unfolded.

Tomorrow, I have to:
Pick up my 11-year old’s yearbook from school (they were delivered a week after school was out);

2)  Exchange some shorts for correct sizes at Old Navy;

3)  Meet husband at Escrow office to sign paperwork;

4)  Wash clothes, pack everything and get boys completely prepared for camp;

5)  Work eight hours;

Summer vacation . . . so relaxing.

At our private pool the other day, six-year old Grace asked me for $1.50 to buy a snack from the vending machine.  She likes the process of choosing a snack and putting in the money more than eating the snack.  Feeling generous, I gave her the dollar bill and two quarters.

She was in the snack shack housing the two vending machines for so long that I finally put down my novel and went to check.  Sometimes the snacks get stuck in the spiral dispenser.  But no, she was just pondering the choices.  She’d been in there about ten minutes.

About five minutes later, she approached my table, clutching two quarters but no snack.

“Where’s your snack?”

“Well, these girls pressed a number and it wasn’t what I wanted and I told them not to but they did.”

The vending machines are the kind where you press the letter and number combination that corresponds to the snack you want.

“They pressed the number after you put in the dollar?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t seem upset, but surprised.  And bewildered.

I, on the other hand, was angry.  “Show me,” I said.

So, we went into the snack shack and she told me again what happened.  I went over it again:  “So, you put in the dollar and then the girls pressed a number?”

“Yes.”

“Where are the Cheetos?”

“They put them on the microwave.”  Sure enough, there behind me were the Cheetos.  I picked them up.  Grace doesn’t even like that kind of Cheetos.

Just then, the girls came into the snack shack doorway.

Two girls, about eight years old.

“Which one of you has a parent here?”  I asked so I would know which one was a member and which one was a guest.

The girl on the left said, “I do.”

“And are you the one who pressed the number after Grace put in her money?”

“It was an accident.”

“An accident.  You just happened to press the number after she put in her dollar?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Well, Grace would not choose this snack.”  I waved the Cheeto package.  “She doesn’t even like this.  She put in the money and you pressed the number just to be mean.”

“No, I wasn’t trying to be mean.”

“Yes, you were.  It was a mean trick to play on her.”

Grace pipes up.  “Mom, it’s okay with me.”

“It’s not okay with me.  Go swim.”  Off she went.

To the culprit:  “Do you want me to go talk to your mom?”

“No!”

“I think you need to apologize to my daughter.  What you did was mean and NOT okay with me.”

I stalked off to my table, deciding not to tell her mother what she’d done.  I would have if the girl had been lippy with me and not repentant.  The little girl came right over to my daughter (who was in the pool) and apologized.  My daughter came up to me a while later and said, “You didn’t need to be so mean to that girl.”

I wasn’t the slightest bit mean.  It would have been mean if I’d taken that child’s money, plugged it into the machine and purchased her something she hated.  It would have been mean if I kicked her in the shins.  But scolding her for doing something that was out of line was my job.  And I take that job very seriously.

My job?  Protecting my kids from bullies, even when they are cute little girls with big eyes wearing swimsuits.  Don’t mess with my kid.

I have a tale to tell.  But I’m too tired.

My daughter “graduated” from kindergarten.  Although it was so sweet, I don’t quite understand kindergarten graduation.  Seems like a newfangled milestone to me.  Was I supposed to get her a car?  Or a pony?

I never had a kindergarten graduation.  I think I’m all right.  Well, okay, maybe that’s an overestimation of my mental health, but still.

Ah, I kid.  I kid because I can.  Also?  I’m going to bed.  (Tomorrow is my son’s last day of fifth grade.  And he doesn’t get to “graduate” from fifth grade.  That seems unfair, right?)

Then I intend to sleep in until September.

I feel like a failure a lot.  My personality fails me (so introverted, so impatient).  My house fails me with its laurel hedges growing into a tall jungle while I’m not looking.  My lawn is rocky and barren and dry, spotted with dandelions.  My laundry room houses not only dirty laundry, but also a hodge-podge of debris that collects.  Plus two always-needing-to-be-cleaned litter boxes.  I can’t get anyone to leave my tools in one place, so I have screwdrivers and wrenches strewn about the house and I can never find the one with the star-tip (what’s it called?  I can never remember).

I failed one thing in all my academic years:  a math test in third grade.  I ripped it apart in anger and went home crying.  When a mean choir teacher gave me a B+ for my semester grade in choir my freshman year, it ruined my grade point average and so I never again took a subjective class in high school.  No art, no music, nothing that couldn’t be quantified and controlled.   What kind of life is that?  A safe life.  A boring life.

I hate to fail.  And yet I fail so often.  When I fail–daily–have you seen my kitchen floor?–I want to run away.  I want to abandon my family to someone who has a better chance of success than I.  I want my kids to have a better mom, my husband to have a better wife.  I don’t want them to have to live with someone like me who gets things wrong more than she gets them right.  I want to wash my hands of the whole sorry mess I’ve made and relocate to a farm where I will wear tie-dye, grow my own vegetables and talk to the animals.  Of course, probably the weeds would overtake my cultivated fields and the animals wouldn’t talk back.

Here’s the sentence I say to myself on occasion:  “How hard can it be?”  The answer, in the case of replacing a freezer gasket is VERY VERY HARD.  Nigh unto impossible, as a matter of fact.  My fingers are too weak and my constitution too impatient to successfully accomplish the goal.  (The goal is to keep food frozen without creating icicles in the fridge.)

I’m sure that it’s not normal to feel like a complete and utter failure because one cannot replace the freezer gasket because one was too impatient to wait for someone to arrive who can complete that task with ease.  It’s not normal to spiral into this black tornado of despair because I can’t keep up with my life.  (If I do not get the lilacs pruned, there will be no blossoms next year.)  It’s not normal that the thought of my storage room causes me great distress, the kind of distress that immobilizes me rather that motivates me.

And being not normal makes me feel like a failure.

I really thought I’d be a good mom, a good wife, a decent human being.  (I have never been called for jury duty.  Why is that?)  I thought I’d have a lush green lawn and the kind of kids who would happily eat a giant chef salad for dinner.  (Ha ha ha ha ha.)

I am pathetic tonight.  Blame PMS.  Blame the stupid freezer.  Blame my puny fingers.  Blame my schedule.  Blame the government.  Blame the mean choir teacher who ruined my grade point average.  But ultimately, it’s all me.  Imperfect, failing me.

And now, here’s the response:

Stop sniveling.  Quit the self-pity.  Enough self-exaggeration and melodrama.  Your hormones are out of control.  Fixing a freezer gasket is not the ultimate test of success.  Imperfection is all right.  Everything will look better in the morning.  Your fingertips will probably even feel better.

Everything that must be done will get done.  Stop complaining.  It’s so unbecoming.

Be grateful.  Be grateful.  Be grateful.

Go to bed.

You should know that chaperoning kindergarten children on a field trip to Seattle is actually not that big of deal when you are only responsible for your own six-year old and two other six-year olds.  Especially if you can play with your iPhone the whole bumpy bus ride there.  The play was so cute–I got in trouble for taking a photograph of the set which looked exactly like the book Good-night, Moon

I was told to delete it from my iPhone and I considered only pretending to delete it but then the Rule Follower in me obeyed.

But by Friday night, my head felt full of cast iron.  I thought perhaps I would finally succumb to the Swine Flu, but no, it was not meant to be.  I am still alive and kicking.

My husband’s forty-eighth birthday is tomorrow.  I can’t speak for him, but I’m feeling older and older by the second.  Tonight we were at a Community Group meeting and nearly everyone was young enough to be my child.  (If I hadn’t been infertile and become a mother at such advanced maternal age, that is.)  That’s just weird.  Almost as weird as the time my dentist in Michigan mentioned “Oh, you’re one day older than me,” which made me wonder what in the world I’d been doing with my life while this man had been making something of himself.  (Answer:  Nothing much, unless you count thousands of meals and loads of laundry “something.”)

What I could use right now is a chiropractor.  My neck is killing me.   (I don’t have a chiropractor.)

This is the last week of school, a fact that makes me either want to celebrate or cry.  But mostly cry.  Not that I don’t want to spend twenty-four hours a day with my kids for 10 straight weeks . . . but I don’t want to spend twenty-four hours a day with my kids while they bicker for the next 10 weeks.   And they will bicker.  It’s apparently a rule.

Tonight, I heard a loud crash while leaving T-ball practice.

Some teenage girls crashed a newer model car right into the garage door.  The funny thing was how they reacted.  One stood outside the car, hands over mouth.  The other got out, checked out the damage and sat back in the driver’s seat and began to talk on her cell phone.  A third ran back and forth into the back yard.  I have no idea.

I am grateful to not be a teenage girl who smashed a new car into the garage door.  I’m also glad not to be the parent of any of those girls.

Tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. I will be boarding a big yellow school bus.  I’ll be chaperoning the kindergarten field trip, along with a bunch of other hearty parents.  We are going to the Seattle Children’s Theater.  On a bus.  To Seattle.  (That’s an hour from here.)  Filled with loud children.

Oh dear.