Ready or Not

My latest Sisyphean challenge is keeping my house “show ready” with children ages three, six and forty-one (yes, I am talking about my husband).  It seems just as I clean and de-clutter the kitchen countertops, someone either clogs a toilet, pitches their pants or panties on the floor, or takes on a Lego-building enterprise of epic proportion.  Push that rock up, and it tumbles back down.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Agonizingly, maddeningly repeat.

Yesterday, after wrestling my daughter into her car seat and ensuring my son was buckled up as well (currently, there is a goldfish lodged in his latch), I pointed the car in the southbound direction headed to a birthday celebration at Monkey Joe’s.  I calculated we could get there by four o’clock, but only if the traffic lights were kind.  We had no time to spare.  As we gabbed about the highs and happenings of our days, my ringing BlackBerry broke up our chatter.  Our real estate agent wanted to show the house at 4:15 PM.  I looked at my watch, 3:45 PM.  F-bomb…cubed.  Running logistics and scenarios quickly in my brain, I agreed that I would swing back to my house, grab my grumpy, growly dog (read: Cujo-like canine not welcoming of strangers on his property), drop him by my sister-in-law’s house, and keep the train moving toward the party for which we were soon to be late. 

I texted the mom of the birthday twins that we were behind schedule, knowing she would understand, having just gone through a similarly frenzied buy-sell-move house cycle.  I rang Weazie (my darling sister-in-law), but wound up having to text her, too, because my signal was cutting in and out…naturally.  I thought to phone Jonathan (my husband), more to express excitement about prospective buyers than anxiety about preparations, but I had slipped into a “Can you hear me now?” conversation-dropping vortex so that call had to wait.

I curbed the car and started to leave Eli and Syd in it while I leashed and dragged Blue back to my rig, but a couple of street-roaming characters holding brown bag wrapped bottles made me think better of this plan.  We three sprinted to the house, sort of.  En route, Eli dropped a deck of cards (yes, scattered all fifty-two of them), Syd stubbed her toe, and I began hallucinating that my children were not actually humans, but rather slugs.  Slugs in quicksand.  We recovered and stumbled inside.  Blue guiltily jumped from the sofa, leaving a drool stain and swirling dog hair in his wake.  I flipped the cushions, Fabreezed the room, and noted that I was now barking more than my dog.  Meanwhile, my little diva decided to don a different gown, and as she made her way to her room, she tossed her socks, shoes, sweater and dress like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs behind her.  I tripped up the steps, picked up the jettisoned pieces and jammed them into a drawer.  

Five minutes before show time, I finally corralled the crew in my car, and we rode off into our rapidly deteriorating afternoon.  While counting to ten in my head and trying to breathe deeply and slowly, the phone rang again, and I answered without checking the number, thinking it was the agent asking where to stash some flotsam or jetsam we had strewn about and overlooked in our flurry.  However, it was Jonathan, asking with rife irritation, “Do we have a showing right now?”  Upon hearing my answer in the affirmative, he thundered, “GODDAMMIT!”  Apparently, his day was going no better than mine.

He and his law partner had just arrived at our house to facilitate a conference call, which they had already rescheduled once, as their office information and voice systems were being upgraded.  I was slightly sympathetic, really I was, but as he was telling me this, my daughter was thrashing and sobbing, Oscar-award-winning-performance style, because the party was a no-girls-allowed affair.  Further, Eli had just punched her, harder than he had intended, because he saw a convertible “Punch Buggy” parked on Monument Avenue.  Blue was frantic, thinking he was going to the vet, and thus tearing back and forth and side to side among the seats, creating a funnel of fur and slobber, and temporarily obstructing my vision as I drove.

In reciprocal huffs, Jonathan and I agreed to divide, conquer and just deal.  He handled the agent, and I continued down the trail with my crazed blue heeler, my dazed daughter and my somewhat un-phased son.  It was no wonder I was sweating through my silk shirt, especially since Blue had accidentally activated the seat heater with his paws.  In the middle of this wholesale unraveling, I stopped for a second to think about the seemingly seismic spiral we’d just spun down in less than forty-five minutes.  At that moment, as if someone were playing the soundtrack of our life, Michael Franti and Spearhead cheerfully chimed in from the radio (and Eli and Syd sang in unison)…and that’s the sound of sunshine coming down.  I laughed, truly out loud, at the irony, and joined in the chorus with my kids…and that’s the sound of sunshine coming down.

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Dish out some happy and be kind, good people.  More later.