Right, so we’ll start off early–cue the kid’s alarm going off at 6:30. Camera zooms in on Mom, the long-suffering hero of this story, struggling blearily to shut off her alarm clock. Half-awake epiphany as she realizes the sound is coming from the other room. The alarm shuts off; she falls back to the pillow swearing almost-intelligibly.
Cut to an hour and a half later, and the kid coming into Mom’s room to “see if she’s awake.” Put black bars over the naughty bits, please, as she was completely nude but for her headphones and she’s transforming more into a young woman every moment. (Physically, anyway. You’ll see why the distinction in a moment.)
Mom tells her to go put clothes on. The refrigerator repairman is due in less than an hour. Mom then staggers out of bed herself and attends to her morning necessities. Sadly, one of these is getting dressed quickly, due to said repairman.
It’s sad because Mom is wearing her favorite pjs and wanted to lounge in them a bit. The shirt is her “plotbunny” shirt, and has a fuzzy rabbit wearing a “gangsta” headscarf and says “Bad Hare Day.” The pants are bright vertical stripes of some lovely vibrant colors, are perfectly on that line between soft and smooth, and are a bit long so they feel cool on Mom’s feet when she walks.
Return of the kid, still naked but for the headphones, carrying her MP3 player and crying. Her brand-new, got it a few days after her birthday so barely a month old, $50 MP3 player Mom scrimped madly to afford because hey, you only hit double-digits once.
Somehow, mysteriously, when she was playing with her Play-Doh (what, you thought she was getting dressed? Silly you) she managed to drop it, and by some odd reverse-miracle, the bright green Play-Doh landed right on the tiny USB port that loads and charges the MP3 player and some of it got stuck in there. The kid tried cramming more in so it would all bond together and she could pull it all out, but that didn’t work.
The camera lingers a bit on Mom’s darkening face, and that little twitchy vein in her forehead.
Using first a nail brush, then a twist-tie and a lot of painstaking cursing digging, our hero manages to get most of the Play-Doh out before she’s even finished her first cup of coffee. Because hysterical ten-year-olds are not fun, the repairman is coming, and dried Play-Doh is harder to deal with than the still-soft kind, that’s why.
Repairman arrives. Everything out of the freezer. Oops, did Mom forget to wash dishes after her fourteen-hour workday yesterday so the sink would be empty and ready to receive the frozen goods?
Ten minutes of work, and everything goes back in the freezer. Mom stares wistfully at her untouched-for-two-days NaNo (20,992 words and she’s at a particularly fun, creepy scene), and girds herself instead to go back to that Hell she calls work for more unpaid overtime.
Mom deserves a medal. And a goddamned cookie. But there are none in the house, as Mom is now scrimping madly to pay bills and had the brilliant idea it would be cheaper, healthier, and more fun to bake her own cookies. During NaNo, while working and Moming full-time.
Mom’s not so bright sometimes. Fortunately, there’s dark chocolate.