Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Things Better Than Driving My Kids All Over Town

I don't know what I was thinking when I did this, but I scheduled the most horrific Saturdays for myself for the near foreseeable future:
Things Better Than Driving My Kids All Over Town -- Somehow I turned into the mom taxi driver, and I'd rather be doing these 30 horrendous things than driving them all over creation every weekend.  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Kid 1: Basketball from 8:30-10
Kid 2: Art class from 9:30-11:30
Kid 3: Basketball from 11-12

So basically, I drive around for four hours every Saturday morning picking somebody up or dropping them off. I mean, with that kind of schedule it's hard to even pretend like you intend to take a shower that day...

It won't be forever, but until the season ends, I thought it might help to draw up a little list of things I'd rather be doing than driving them all over creation:

  1. Throw on a pair of parachute pants and teach a classroom full of surly teenagers how to Hammer Dance.
  2. Manually sort my kids' Lego collection by color, shape, and size.
  3. Watch the kids dump out the Legos 3.5 minutes later.
  4. Spend a day mastering the art of folding fitted sheets.
  5. Answer the phone when caller ID says "TELEMARKETER." 
  6. Clean the crevices under the kids' car seats in the van.
  7. Email my social security number to the guy in Nigeria who wants to wire $7 million USD to my bank account.
  8. Lend my toothbrush to the kids for a day.
  9. Re-read the college textbooks I've been saving because I'm totally going to brush up on my Japanese someday.
  10. Individually remove every seed from a carton of strawberries.
  11. Sit on the toilet seat in the kids' bathroom without looking first.
  12. Extract the lost socks and underwear behind the washing machine.
  13. Stop hitting the "skip ad" button before YouTube videos.
  14. Steam iron my clothes while I'm wearing them.
  15. Make a household rule that from now on, we're only allowed to speak if we can somehow tie it in to Minecraft.
  16. Sit through a 4th grade recorder recital. Of someone else's child.
  17. Wake up to a toddler with a full diaper sitting on my face.
  18. Find out a way to get every article on the Internet delivered to me in slide show format.
  19. Swap the kids' car seats, just for fun. Every day.
  20. The following 3 occupations: stun gun test subject, Sistine Chapel ceiling fan duster, professional photographer for pictures of weird rashes on Google Images.
  21. Stare directly at the sun.
  22. Hang out at the E.R. waiting room trying to make friends.
  23. Get a "Sorry, my kids have lice [frowny face emoji]" text from the friend I babysat for yesterday.
  24. Go on a hunger strike until every last sock in this house has been matched.
  25. Do everything Pinterest tells me to for one week, no exceptions.
  26. Read all 72,536 pages of U.S. federal tax law. Out loud to my toddler, whether he likes it or not.
  27. Insist on hearing each and every last detail of my children's dreams from last night. 
  28. Watch all the computer-animated Barbie movies ever made, back to back.
  29. Replace the water in my Neti Pot with Coca-Cola.
  30. Listen to my preschooler complain about how hard her life is as I scrub the inside of the trash can with a toddler pulling my hair. (Oh wait, I did that yesterday.)

There are many more things I'd rather do than drive my kids all over town, and let that be a lesson to me next time I'm tempted to sign up for... anything. Until then, it's Hammer Time.


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15 comments:

Katy said...

Too funny. I enjoyed them all but give you mad props for the one about the toothbrush and sitting on the kids' toilet without looking!

Jenny said...

I'm just trying to figure out what to do with my 2 year old while my 4 year old is at swim lessons. That schedule gives me anxiety. I wish you luck!

Lynne at The Sweet Midlife said...

You had me at parachute pants and "Skip Ad". You are hilarious. Stay strong.

Unknown said...

On Monday evenings 1 has gymnastics, 2 have pee wee wrestling at 2 different times and two have basketball practice at two different times. Last Saturday I drove a child to basketball by myself to a town nearly 3 hours away and had to be there by 8:30 a.m. then drove back to my town to watch my other daughter's team even though she is hurt and can't play right now. Feel better yet?

Queen Mom Jen said...

Why oh why did the Hammer pants have to go out of style?! I bet with the never ending fashion parade of changes, they might be back in style in a few years though... Good luck driving! Get a good CD :)

Jenny Evans said...

Um, yes. Luckily both basketball practices happen to be in-town only, but driving everyone to their travel soccer games in the spring kills me!

Jenny Evans said...

Better hang on to mine, then, just in case.

Jenny Evans said...

It only happens if you're crazy enough to do it to yourself. Resist the urge!

Unknown said...

Wait, am I supposed to be scrubbing trash cans, too? I just put another liner in quick before anyone sees what grotesqueness is living there.

Unknown said...

By the way that dropped crotch look IS back. They are just not as colorful!

Moonofsilver said...

You clearly love driving just as much as I do.

Kristin said...

#27 - I'M NOT ALONE?!?! I thought it was just MY kid that insists on regaling me with every detail, every morning. And I swear she makes half of it up. No one dreams that often. No one.

Jenny Evans said...

Half the time I just know they're making stuff up as they go along. As they're talking I can see them literally looking around the room and incorporating whatever they see into their "dream." Never makes one lick of sense, either!

Rachel said...

hahaha! #30 especially...because of the two 4 year olds here, I hear a lot of drama about how tough life and relationships are.

My parents have long taken a firm stance against letting us kids sign up for anything that will require them to drive us. They've let it be known that we can do pretty much anything we want as long as we can get there ourselves. I did drama club and theater competitions in high school--I just walked to the school and my coach's house (about a 20 minute walk), same with my brother who did boy scouts in middle school and high school, he just walked to his meetings. Other times we'd get rides from older friends who could drive if we were practicing a dance or going to youth group or something. Right now my baby sister has weekly ballet lessons, and the only reason is because her friend's parents wanted their daughter to go to ballet, and she wanted to have a friend in her class, so they opted to pay for Sarah's lessons and take her every week. Because if it was up to my parents they'd be like...Sorry, not worth it. Because of homeschooling they never had to drive us anywhere for our education and got a little spoiled.

I feel pretty much the same way, but we're going to have a kidliving with us for the next few months and we have to bring him to school and pick him up every day and I'm like, "How are we going to do that?"

Jenny Evans said...

I can't even imagine doing school drop-off and pickup every day. Thank goodness for the school bus, or I would definitely homeschool!