A Sense of Humor Helps

Last week, while we were on vacation visiting my grandmother, my husband got a series of phone calls from work that culminated in the decision that he would be headed off for a business trip two days after we got back into town. Not even that long, really--we got back home late Saturday night, and he left at 7:30 a.m. on Monday for a three-hour cram session at his office before heading off to catch an international flight. I handled this news with the calm that can only come from true, deep denial. I know from experience that not only am I not a great solo mom, but the universe has a funny habit of dropping a lot of extra crap on me as soon as my husband departs for distant time zones. (The most extreme example is a one-week trip hubby took in 2009 that involved the computer that had my NaNoWriMo novel in progress on it dying the day he left, two kids with swine flu, him getting food poisoning overseas and being hospitalized, etc., etc.)

Life got complicated when we got home, since it became apparent that our cranky 17-year-old cat was having some kind of health crisis. My husband took her to the emergency vet clinic on Sunday morning, where they promptly performed a complete wallet-ectomy on us. Cranky kitty got a very expensive overnight stay, as well as bloodwork, an x-ray, oxygen, antibiotics, fluids, etc., and ultimately a diagnosis of renal failure that may or may not be caused by a suspected bladder infection (still waiting on the results of a culture right now). Emergency vet clinic only works emergency hours, which meant I had to go pick her up at 6:30 on Monday morning and bring her home just until I could call our regular vet and take her over there.

Don't get me wrong here--I am actually in love with this emergency vet clinic. The two prior times I have had the misfortune to rush a cat in crisis to an emergency vet clinic, I not only got to pay dearly for it, I got back a dead cat. The fact that this clinic gave me back a live cat makes me much happier about the bill.

Monday went like this: Pick up cat from emergency vet (blessedly, sans kids). Come home, shower, try to get kids ready to go so we can take cat to regular vet as soon as possible. Call regular vet at 9, get green light to bring her in. Drop her off, kids in tow. Run errands with them to pick up gift for my niece's birthday and get groceries. Take kids to previously scheduled medical checkups (so scheduled since we were supposed to have nothing else going on, ha ha). Run back to vet to pick up cat before they close for the night. Go over to brother- and sister-in-law's to have cupcakes for aforementioned niece's birthday. My demeanor for most of the day was fairly drill-sergeant-esque--I did not have time for my herd of three boys to indulge their usual urges to lollygag and get distracted by every shiny object we passed.

In fact, I've been pretty snappy the entire time my husband has been gone. Knowing that I have no co-parent backup puts me into what I think of as survival mode. I focus on getting through each day's to-do list, one item at a time, and try not to think of all the things I am, of necessity, not getting accomplished because I only have one set of hands and approximately sixteen hours of time each day to get stuff done.

Tonight I overheard my boys muttering to each other about me as they cleaned up the Game of Life that two of them had scattered all over the den floor. Son #1 pointed out to Son #2 that I was in a bad mood. I did not go in and point out to them that my bad mood had been precipitated by their superhuman ability to ignore my instructions to help clean up the house, which had escalated from polite requests through direct orders right on up to yelling. (Note to every ten-year-old boy on the planet: When your mom has let you play virtually all day, and you respond to her exasperated tenth demand to help clean up your room by saying that she thinks you are her slave, it is not going to end well for you. And you're going to have to clean up your room anyway.)

So I think I'm going to have to scale my ambitions for this week down even further than I already had (main goal: lead husband to believe I'm not totally hopeless on my own by having him return to an only moderately disastrous house containing three reasonably well-fed and fully dressed boys, no pets having perished on my watch) and just try to get my sense of humor back. Whether I am right or not about the need for the boys to take responsibility for their stuff and pitch in (who am I kidding, darn tooting I'm right!), it helps nothing for me to turn into crazy shrieking banshee mom this week.

So honey, if you're reading this, fair warning: I'm giving up on the laundry, and I wouldn't make bets on the likelihood of any beds being made. However, I promise not to try to sell the children on eBay no matter how crazy they make me with their unparalleled ability to belch at will or by doing boneheaded things like putting a container full of empty edamame pods back in the fridge. And most of all, I promise to do my best to keep cranky kitty going strong until you get back home so you can see all the funny places they shaved her at the vet's.

Not my kitty, though I'm sure after her week she feels much the same as this one does.