I Don’t Want To Be The Mommy Anymore

How do I opt out?

Did you know that if you type “snotty noses” into Unsplash you get really cute pictures of animals with their babies like the one above? It almost makes me feel better.

On the other hand, I think Unsplash might be part of a greater conspiracy to keep us from seeing real life. For the moment, mine’s full of other people’s snot.

The last few weeks in this house have been filled with Covid. Both my younger daughter and my husband got it in spades.

Guess who didn’t? That’s right - moi. Which meant that I had the lovely job of caring for these miscreants, while keeping the house clean, paying the bills, and guarding my sanity.

You know that saying about the bigger they are, the harder they fall? My husband is probably 100 pounds overweight and had serious trouble breathing.

Let’s add major worry to my list of things to do.

Oh, and just try to write when someone’s constantly pestering you with, “Mom, can I have….”

Yes, I’m complaining about my maternal workload again.

One day last week, in between dispensing Tylenol and massaging painful joints, I got a phone call from my son urgently requesting a copy of the list of classes he’d need to get into a good medical school. We’d worked on that list before he went off to college. I could swear I packed a hard copy of it in his suitcase and made him take it with him.

He’d been signing up for spring courses and the available classes were filling up quickly. He needed that list NOW.

While I’m excited about the prospect of possibly having someone in the family who could easily write me a prescription for Xanax, I wish he could figure this stuff out on his own, especially when I’m busy playing nurse to two helpless and incredibly needy adults.

Of course, I found the list while still on the phone in a folder aptly named, XXX — College. I took a picture of it and texted him. How’s that for efficient mom power?

Then there was the fish emergency. My daughter, in her fevered delirium, somehow lobbed a cotton t-shirt halfway into her beta’s fish tank. By the time she’d figured out what she’d done, the t-shirt had soaked up about half of the water from the tank, leaving her poor fish with nowhere to hide.

Add saving Jim-Bob’s life to my list of heroic activities.

Just as I was rescuing the fish, my older daughter called to whine about her latest date and not being able to find a decent man online. She told me they never look like they do in their pictures.

That fact seemed obvious to me, but what do I know?

When I asked her why she didn’t look around for male prospects at work, the gym, or any other place where she might be able to see them in the flesh first, she replied, “Mom, no one hunts in the wild anymore.”

Well, color me out-of-it and set me in the corner.

This all happened in the space of an hour last week.

Today, my husband and daughter are feeling much better and testing negative for Covid. But, they’re still a little snotty and tired, so neither has plans to go back to work any time soon.

And, both of them want to know what I’m planning for dinner.

My adorable, loving family is making me crazy, and for the moment, I wish they’d all go away because I need a break. Does that make me a bad mom?

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I was ever under the weather. But, obviously, that will never be the case.

Because, I don’t think moms are allowed to get sick.