Every Thursday, I run out of all gas and steam by the time 7pm hits. I have rushed home by this point and quickly fed my family, rushed to eat dinner with Ivan so he can leave for his group on time, and up the stairs Audrey and I go for bath time. I bathe her, lotion her up, put warm pajamas on her and cuddle on the couch for a few moments, for this is all we will have for today. Sigh. This is the life of a working mama-bean.
So by the time this whole process is done I am barely conscious (especially as we watch Arthur for the 100th time). I doze off and wake up to the DVR taped episode being over. I lay Audrey down in her crib and back to the couch I go for more hibernation. I had grand plans of folding the 6 loads of clean laundry laying around in baskets, of prepping the delicious meat loaf we are going to have for dinner tonight with some lovely guests, of starting *another* load of laundry, of doing some sewing repairs to some garments, of …. (and the list could go on and on). But instead I laid on the couch in a supine position zoning out to an episode of LOST I had already watched and then catching the new one. About 9pm, I arose, refreshed from my hibernation.
Went downstairs, finished the dishes from the last 2 nights of dinner that we had never gotten around to, started that load of laundry I couldn’t get my ass off the couch to do earlier. Ivan came home and we debriefed his experience in his group and off to bed we go.
I say all of this chain of events to let you know that my tank of grace and humor was completely depleted. So as I crawl into my big king size bed with cozy sheets and pull my countoured pillow with fresh white linen case on it, something catches my eye.
Interesting. What is this I see?
Black markings striping the entire length of my lovely pillowcase.
Unbelievable. My daughter has “colored” my pillowcase. Now, most days, most other times, I could *kind of* smile at this and see it as my daughter having an outlet for her artistic talents.
Not this time.
Nope.
No grace left. No ability to laugh at the silliness of this.
Depleted.
Unable to appreciate the artwork and just let it go.
Instead, I kept repeating to myself, “She drew all over my pillow”, with all the drama of Anne Shirley when she dyed her hair green.
Ivan is laughing hysterically and saying to me, “Your pillow has lovely stripes.” Ha ha ha.
Glare.
In World of Warcraft, there is a long standing joke in the horde rhealms I have played in that surrounds the notorious name of my character: Nukpana, the evil one with lovely spots. My character is a Tauren which is a cow like creature that has warm and milky brown eyes and treasured brown spots on white hide. It started off as silliness and continued as silliness. And my husband was making a jibe about my lovely spots by calling my decorated pillow lovely stripes. Which aggravated me even more which made him laugh even more.
And as we fell asleep, I heard him chuckling one last time.
Glad it was so damn funny to him.
I sure wasn’t laughing.
Poor pillow (with lovely stripes).