Multi-Tasking

Recently as a homework assignment for a writing course I am taking, I was asked to make a list of priorities. I sent them in to my mentor. He made the comment that my priorities seemed to be in order, 'especially for a busy person’ adding that I should make sure that I write some every day. You can't imagine how thrilled I was just to know that he could see I am a busy person. A lot of people don’t see it that way. Just last night a teenage girl at church asked me what I do after I take the boys to school each day, suggesting in her own words that I ‘sit around the house’. First of all, it takes me an hour and a half just to take my kids to school, and another hour and a half to pick them up, thank you very much. That leaves me with only five hours to ‘sit around’. But her comment did get me thinking. What do I do every day?

For busy moms like myself who run helter-skelter all the time, it can sometimes be hard to define what we do. Heck, most of the time I’m doing more than one thing anyway. I sometimes will sit dutifully down to 'write every day' and notice that my bedside table is full of half-empty water bottles. I’m not the only one in my family that never finishes a bottle, so I go around to each room and collect an armload of them. On my way to the kitchen to pour them out and throw them away, I pass the front door and remember a planter there full of thirsty petunias. I pour the contents there rather than waste the water. While doing that, I realize I don’t have enough to water all the plants so I turn on the hose and get busy. While I’m soaking the flower beds I get down and pull up some pesky weeds and grass. Soon I have quite a pile going so I go into the house to get a trash bag. There are none. Better make a grocery list! I open the refrigerator to take stock. Boy, it’s dirty in here. No time like the present to clean it! So I start to unload, sitting items out on the floor. I take out the shelves and put them in the sink, turning on the hot water. While running the water, I look out the window and see the family dog, her sad pathetic little cocker spaniel eyes saying “feed me!” I open the back door and she comes bounding in, knocking over the ketchup bottles and pickle jars on the floor, skidding around the corner and racing toward the open front door. Once out there, she splashes through the water that is now overflowing the flower beds. The grass and weeds I had cleaned out is drifting down the sidewalk in unsightly clumps. I manage to grab her and pull her back through the house, her muddy paws screeching across the hardwood floors. I finally get her out and shut the door. Remembering the kitchen sink just in time I rush back to turn off the water. Exhausted and unaccomplished I grab a water bottle off the floor near the fridge and head back to the bedroom to write. I’ll have to clean up the mess later. My husband will wonder ‘what I did today’ and I won’t be able to tell him. He’ll be amused that I randomly placed little piles of weeds along the walkway leading to the house. He’ll think it odd that I lined up condiments on the kitchen floor. A lingering odor of 'wet dog' might cause him to momentarily assume that I spent the day grooming our pets. He'll quickly see that's not right. Not only did I not bathe her, I didn't feed her either! Maybe he’ll notice my big accomplishment of the day: the water bottles are off the nightstands. Maybe not. Maybe I had better get back to my writing assignment. That’s one thing I can control. Now….what will I write about?