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Broke Wife, Big City
Time flies when
you’re elbow deep in poo
By Aprill Brandon
It is currently 9:04 p.m. If you were to put a gun to my head right now
and demand that I recount how I just spent my entire day, I’d be dead.
Like super dead.
(Super dead, of course, being more dead than just regular dead and a
lot more dead than mostly dead).
That’s because I have no bloody idea what I did today. Or yesterday. Or
for the past five months.
It wasn’t always this way. I used to be able to flawlessly recall my
daily activities, from what Netflix show I was currently binge watching
to what specific type of pizza roll I was mindlessly eating while binge
watching said Netflix show.
And then I became a parent.
See, as it turns out, parenthood is a constant state of being where you
never have any free time and yet nothing ever seems to get done. And
even though my to-do list has now been whittled down to just one main
objective every day (“keep kid alive”), at the end of the day, I can’t
tell you how I got there.
I mean, sure, in general terms, I can say, yes, I fed him and changed
his diapers and played “I’m Gonna Eat Your Tootsies” roughly 316 times.
But the math just doesn’t add up. Because doing those things
technically only takes up a relatively small portion of my day.
So, how is it then that when I crawl into bed at night, I have no idea
where the other 70 percent of my day went?
Well, being the scientifically minded person that I am, I came up with
some theories.
Possible Theories On Where The Time Actually Goes:
1. Babies are like vampires. You look into their adorable eyes and are
unknowingly glamoured. But since they can only babble instead of
talking in full sentences, your brain isn’t filled with false memories
but rather with a jumble of random sounds and images.
2. Just like road hypnosis, where you are suddenly sitting in the
parking lot of work but don’t remember driving there, there is such a
thing as diaper hypnosis, where you change diapers so often you no
longer remember doing it.
3. Patrick Stewart invented some kind of machine that steals minutes
from the lives of anyone who watches reruns of “Star Trek: The Next
Generation” and that’s why he hasn’t aged in 30 years.
4. Maybe time really does fly when you’re having fun. And it shoots off
like goddamn rocket when you have a baby screaming directly into your
face.
5. Technically bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly because their bodies
are too heavy for their wings and other science stuff. And yet, they
still fly. I don’t really know how this relates to me never having any
time but you gotta admit, that’s pretty shady. They’re up to
something.
6. Or it could just be that you can no longer remember what you’ve done
all day because as a parent, you’re doing 12 things all at once, all of
them one-handed and at least three-fourths of them half-assed.
For instance, I still binge watch Netflix but I’m also trying to shovel
a spoonful of glop (the technical term for rice cereal mixed with
breastmilk) into a tiny and constantly moving target at the same time.
And then I’m trying to clean up the glop from the floors and the walls
and the target’s hair and feet while trying unsuccessfully at the same
time to keep the dog from eating the leftover glop that is smeared all
over the kid’s face. All while also talking to my mom on the phone
because this was the only “free time” I had to talk. And then I empty
only half of the dishwasher because I just remembered I need to take
the clothes out of the washer, the same load that’s been in there for
11 days because I keep forgetting about it, just rewashing it over and
over again because by the time I remember it’s in there, all the
clothes are dank and musty. But on my way there, the kid throws up and
so I go to change his clothes, putting him in my old Nirvana T-shirt
because all his clothes have been in the washer for 11 days. And then
he’s crying so we go for a walk in the park (first packing a diaper bag
with 98 percent of my son’s belongings inside it) while I try to pay
bills online via my smartphone, steering drunkenly one-handed and
running over squirrels and small dogs. And then we’re home and I take
him out of the stroller only to discover he left behind the entire
contents of his lower intestines. So then I’m elbow deep in poo and
bleach and my husband calls to see what we want to do for dinner and
all this continues for 16 more hours until I go to bed wondering what
the hell just happened.
It could be that’s where all the time goes.
But personally, I think it’s the bumblebees.
Can’t get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until next week?
Check out her website at http://aprillbrandon.com/
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