There is a reason mothers never get anything done - to accomplish anything in a single day (and by accomplish I mean focus entirely on a single task so that it is actually completed ) is a total waste of time. It is simply inefficient. For example, the gains from emptying the dishwasher are limited - you get all your dishes returned to their particular cupboard or drawer just in time to remove them for use during the next meal. But the losses stemming from emptying the dishwasher are seemingly endless. While you are putting plates and cups away, your kids are dumping cereal out on the floor, tying dental floss to matchbox cars and the banister and their baby sister, flushing things unknown down the toilet, changing their clothes over and over and over…
You would think that after eight years of parenting I would know this, and consequently know better than to ever try to get anything done (while my children are awake), and for the most part I do remember this and manage to never ever even attempt to accomplish anything beyond feeding, clothing and occasionally bathing my children. But every now and again I get cocky and ambitious and try to get something else besides child rearing (really child maintenance) done. And every time, without fail, the costs of the accomplishment far outnumber the gains…
On Wednesday, I made my toddler noodles (whole wheat wheels) tossed with olive oil and covered in freshly grated pecorino cheese. I then set to work loading and unloading the washer and dryer and the sorting a basket of my husbands dress socks. In celebration of my utter wholesomeness, I decided to take a little break. I sat back and treated myself to a little cultural enlightenment (the new US Weekly had arrived in the mail slot fifteen minutes prior) until I was rudely interrupted by a request for cheese - "Mo ‘nother kind of cheese" to be specific. My daughter, clearly indulging her white trash tastebuds (from her father not me) decided that $12.00 a pound pecorino just wasn’t cutting it - she couldn’t eat her wheels without a healthy sprinkling of Kraft’s Original Parmesan Style Cheese Topping. Not wanting to be interrupted again before I got to the bottom of this whole Madonna-A-Rod situation, I wisely left her with the entire can of cheese product.
And dammit not ten minutes later I was interrupted again and this time it wasn’t a polite request for a condiment, it was a full-on toddler wail. "MOMMEE my another finger stuck!". Sure enough my daughter had somehow lodged her tiny little finger into the middle hole of the cheese shaker top. I did not panic. I simply unscrewed the bottom half of the can of cheese product and set about pulling the finger back through the hole. Only that finger wasn’t going anywhere. In fact it was rapidly swelling to double, no triple its normal size. I tried lathering her hand with soap and tugging. Nothing, only screams. Next I tried olive oil. With the lid still firmly in place, I decided to make a few phone calls. I called a friend who is a pediatrician for her advice. She suggested soap and grease (so much for med school) and then upon confirming that the color of the finger had changed from sweet baby pink to a sickening reddish purple, she told me to gather up my toddler, lid and all and take her down to the ER for professional assistance.
Anyone who has taken a child to the ER knows that it is not something you do lightly, as one friend says, going to the ER with your kid is worse than going to the DMV (or if you live in Cleveland Heights even worse than signing up for anything at the rec center when the mean lady is working). But my friend, the magical pediatrician, did something so incredibly thoughtful that I will never be able to repay her - she called ahead and warned her colleagues that an incompetent mother was en route with a toddler who could not be extricated from the lid of a Kraft Parmesan Style Cheese Topping Container. When we got to the ER, there was a crowd of six or seven medical professionals gathered around to greet us. I’m pretty convinced they were there to see what exactly what kind of mother would feed her kid imitation cheese, unsupervised. What they didn’t know is that it was the same kind of mother who would bring her toddler to the ER barefoot and covered in magic marker on the left side of her body (she’s right handed I guess).
Forty five minutes, four doctors and three nurses later, my daughter’s finger was freed. I won’t tell you exactly how they did it but it did involve a lot of trial and error and some serious MacGyver style problem solving.
So what did I get accomplished? Well I gained, one moldy load of laundry (I didn’t return to transfer the load from washer to dryer for a couple of days), one wrinkled heap of towels, approximately seven pairs of black socks which haven’t quite made it to my husband’s sock drawer, and the invaluable knowledge that Madonna most certainly is leaving Guy Ritchie for a Yankee’s third baseman. And my losses? Well, the lid to my parmesan cheese bottle and the yet to be determined but definitely more than three hundred dollars Emergency Room bill are really only the beginning.
Was it getting something done really worth it? Hardly. Then again, I might be able to recoup some of my losses by filing a complaint against Kraft and their dangerous cheese shakers. But that would require some time to sit down and really focus on getting it done…
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