My Exciting Life: A List

This is what I do everyday. My life is sex-o-rama, people.

6am - Get up. Drink ice tea that David made for me and keeps in a vat in the fridge so I am not tempted to run down to Starbucks and spend the family fortune in $2.60 increments every day.

6:30am - Sweep up the debris on the floor I was too tired to sweep up the night before. I find chunks of duck fat in the girl's toothbrush holder. I am perplexed but not altogether surprised.

7am - E-mail people.

7:30am - Compose blog entry that I think is hilarious at the time, but when I later read it, realize it's just stupid.

8am - Feel like a failure. Vow to give up writing. Kids get up. I am distracted from my own self-pity. I remember back to when I didn't have kids and I could wallow in self-pity indefinately. Ah, those were the days...

8-9am - Poach eggs for David, his breakfast of choice, two eggs gently poached with a little salt and a bit of romano cheese grated on top. Girls make a toilet paper highway across the house while I cook for them. House looks like hoodlums have taken over and left me bound and gagged in a cabinet. Someone takes a poop on the floor. Least it wasn't me.

9am - Kiss David good-bye at the door. We linger there. I'm all hot. Just as he's walking out the door. We vow to have sex when he gets home. We already know we have no shot in hell.

9am - 2pm - Babysitter comes and kids play with her. I write stuff for my clients and basically do nothing to further my own book writing career. At least twice during this time, I read something my clients tried to write and curse them for not knowing how to write properly. Then, I remember this is why I write for them. That makes me feel needed. I continue on, ridding the world of bad prose.

2pm - 6pm - Babysitter leaves. I am alone with the kids. I love my kids. They are old enough to be really fun to be around. This is good because babies make me want to watch Maury Povitch re-runs. We play and people drop over and more debris litters the floor. I sweep. The floor is actually clean for 5 minutes. Then, the Playdoh comes out. Or the paint. Or the paper mache. Or the kid downstairs, who is a little ADD and likes to tear the curtains from the rods, comes over and my sweeping is in vain because snacks are required and cup after cup of juice and I am Flo from Alice's diner and I'm wearing a pink uniform and a paper hat and bad plastic earrings and clacking my gum like a hooker and somehow, Edie has blue paint on her tongue and Lucy spilled a gallon-sized bag of pink sequins all over the rug and the ADD neighbor kid tore a fern out by the roots and carried the thing across the house to show me, raining a torrent of dirt and root parts through my house and I go to pick up the broom, but the hooligans have trashed my house and they are cracking up having a good time and I think, "Okay, if social services walks in, I'm screwed but at least the kids are having a good time," and then I make them all cuddle up with me in the gigantic bean bag and settle down and we read books, surrounded by a flood of pink sequins and raisins. ADD kid goes home. Finally. Try to get the fern dirt out of the grout in my kitchen floor. Oh, and I sweep again.

6pm - 7pm - David comes home. Children experience a surge in energy and enthusiasm because of his arrival. They squeal when he walks in and throw themselves into his arms for hugs as if they had just gotten back from saving the world and the day had been more stressful and hard than any they could imagine. I roll my eyes at them. That's how it is end of day. I kiss my husband, kind of full on the lips, just preparing him for his night of torrid love-making and erotic calisthenics. We are full of hope. It's gonna happen, dammit. I make dinner. We eat dinner. I sweep dinner off floor. Broom is looking over-worked. I find peas in the heater.

7pm - 8pm - The three B's: Bath, books, bed. Takes an extra 15 minutes to get paint out of Edie's eyelashes and both girls end up sobbing because I have the audacity to try to wash their hair. Our basic hygiene issues continue unabated.

8pm - Children might go to sleep at their actual bedtime. David and I look at each other knowingly. I brush his shoulder lightly with my finger tips and he smiles. I say something nice about his abs. He mentions that I combed my hair. This is the only foreplay we're gonna get. We go with it.

9pm - One child is still resisting bed time. With the other out cold, the one still standing gets to be the only child and relishes being the sole object of our affection and attention. She becomes super-human in her ability to fend off sleep. There are numerous bathroom breaks, requests for water, leaping out of bed and chasing the cat, some very earnest sounding "I love you's" and several hundred pleas to stay up with us. David and I see our sex fading in the distance. I yawn. The window is nearly closed. David opens his lap top to do a little work. And the last of our mood is officially killed.

10pm - The last remaining child goes to sleep. I have to lay down with her to get her down, so of course, I fall asleep with her. Now, I'm bleary-eyed. Sex is like the last thing on my mind. David is tapping away at the keyboard. We are surrounded by the sound of sleeping, dreaming children. I have the shape of the pillow crusted into my face and my hair looks like I've been electrocuted. I take a tub of home-made ice cream out of the freezer and get two spoons. David pops a movie in and I find the crook of his arm and settle there. We feed each other ice cream. We know we're gonna get all fat and bloated but we don't care. This will have to do for tonight. And it does.

See, I told you...Sex-O-Rama.

xxoo YM