Girl I Want To Make You Sweat

I’m writing this blog post from the cold, hard tile of my bathroom floor. I’d make some joke about how the rug has been pulled out from under me, but the truth is… it’s the only thing that’s keeping me comfortable right now.

I woke up this morning feeling no different than any other day. I helped my girls pick out their school outfits with a smile and giggle as always. Our conversations circled around whether or not to bring a second set of shoes when my 10-year-old wanted to wear her 3-inch tall wedge heels and whether or not my 8-year-old should sport the neon Fannypack that’d so perfectly lined up with the color schema she'd prepared. I should have sensed the foreshadowing.

So about that bathroom floor… when I came downstairs for breakfast, I made myself a delicious bowl of something healthy Devon bought, took a bite, and immediately the cold sweats kicked in. It was in that moment that I knew I could no longer run away from the more serious side effects of this God-awful cocktail of drugs I’m on. So a few army crawls into the bathroom later, I curled up on the floor and made the inevitable emergency phone call begging my mom to get here ASAP. She's on her way now, but not in time to get my girls to the bus. Initiate super mamma mode. 

As I wait for my hot flashes and nausea to subside, the world keeps turning. And Gisele needs help with her Adidas kicks. “Can you tie my shoes, mamma?” she asks with priorities of her own. “Yes, baby. I’m awesome at that.” I reply, never arguing with a good time, even when full horizontal and half naked on a bathroom floor near-heaving. 

“Are you dying, mamma? I can see your ribs.” she inquires with some glistening tears now in her eyes as the scene is likely too real to ignore. I smirk. "Oh, no, baby. Today's just a harder day. My medicine that helps make me HEALTHY is so strong that sometimes it makes me SICK. It's kinda backwards, huh?" She nods. She gets it. And we gotta keep moving or else the second-to-last day of school bus is going to drive on by.

I turn into some thirty-minutes-post-Ambien sounding drill sergeant slow-barking out commands from the bathroom to both children, using numbers to help them keep my orders all straight - "One, have you brushed your teeth? Two, have you packed your lunch? Three..." - and my mind is racing that this is all likely to be aging them at a far greater rate than even a month's worth of unfiltered exposure to the Real Housewives of Somewhere... ugh. These are the cards I've been dealt, I think. We gotta play on.

I force myself to wink and smile, snap a selfie to memorialize this ridiculous moment in life, then slowly stand myself upright like the I've-fallen-and-I-can't-get-up lady only ever dreamed of. Winning, I thought. 😉 

Then just like ol' Cindy-rella trying to beat the clock before her pals find out she's just a peasant and the dress is a rental, I near-jog to the half-way mark to the bus stop. I watch as my girls walk the last block on their own. Then blow kisses and wave like crazy just as the bus begins its approach. 

As I turn back in the direction of home, my emotions finally catch up with me and I'm overwhelmed right to the brink of tears. But I hold them back for another day. And I pray for my mother's safety as I imagine her pressing her foot as far as it can go against the steel of the gas pedal.