A morning in the life of the chaos cowgirl…
Alarm goes off at 6AM, but I never (never) wake up the first time. I snooze it and snooze it until finally it’s 7AM and a heart-pounding race to get out the door in time to avoid the walk of shame — signing my kid in tardy to elementary school.
Between 7AM and 7:20, the following happen: I throw on some semblance of an outfit (later in the day, I’ll always wish that I spent more time on my fashion choices). I brush my teeth, or don’t. I let the dog out, pop my anti-depressant while putting down toast for my kid and watching out of one eye to make sure the dog doesn’t hurdle over the fence and escape into the neighborhood like he tends to do. I admonish my kid for how long it’s taking him to get dressed, put on his shoes, find his backpack. He doesn’t feel the same urgency I do to make sure he gets to school on time. The sense of stress I feel is not appropriate for what’s at stake: M regularly reminds me that tardies in the second grade are not important. Yet that stress never translates into preventative changes like waking up earlier, prepping outfits the night before, or otherwise making our departure from the house less harrowing.
We rumble out at 7:20, plus or minus a few minutes. If my diesel F-250 wasn’t so wide, I’m sure we’d be leaving the driveway on two wheels. Today, the bed of the truck is filled with several dozen pumpkins and towering bales of hay for the farm animals that were donated to me by a retirement community.
Whether we arrive to school on time or not depends largely on the traffic lights. I don’t build any flex time into our schedule. Today, we were lucky. We hit all greens. I’ve learned to avoid the drop-off line at school, and instead we park on the grass at a church near the school. We race — I always let him win, or at minimum tie, which I regularly regret as a parenting choice that will fail to inoculate him against defeat. School doors close at 7:45, and we’re lucky to get there at 7:43 or 7:44 … I’m always wondering if they’ll lock the door while I’m hugging him goodbye, so I keep one eye on the door while he hugs me.
It’s 7:45, I’ve been awake for only 45 minutes, but already experienced enough cortisol to last a couple of weeks. It’s time to head to work.