The ADD of Motherhood

“I’ll be back out in a minute,” I said to my husband Kevin as we were sitting on the back porch reading the Sunday paper. “I need to go throw a load of laundry into the washer.”

On my way upstairs to gather a load of white clothes, I notice my son’s soccer cleats on the steps, unknowingly sparking an ADD-like chain of events. I gingerly pick up the smelly footwear, toss them onto his bedroom floor and run for the Lysol to eliminate that “teen boy smell” from his room.

After spraying a hefty dose of disinfectant, I see a sports bottle sitting on my son’s dresser. The bottle’s dripping condensation just taunts me with the threat of an impending water stain, so I whisk it away to the dishwasher.

As I load the bottle into the dishwasher, I notice the haphazard way that things are just shoved into the top rack. Small ice cream bowls sit right-side-up, just waiting to collect water. Knives perch precariously, ready to slice off a fingertip at any moment. Cups lay sideways, as if they were just tossed in arbitrarily. For God’s sake, does no one in this family have spatial awareness? You can fit eight more glasses in here!

While rearranging the top rack, I notice an open box of cereal that someone left on the counter from breakfast three hours earlier. Would it kill anyone to close a box around here? Or put it away?

Hoping the Frosted Flakes have not morphed into floppy flakes in our humid Florida air, I close up the box and put it back in the cupboard. I look on the shelf below and realize we’re down to our last can of cat food.

As I write “cat food” on our grocery list posted above the phone, I notice a reddish smudge (blood? ketchup?) stuck to the receiver. Ew, gross.

I grab the canister of wipes and clean the phone smudge with the vigor of a surgeon’s pre-op scrub. Since I used the last wipe, I toss the empty canister into the recyclable container, causing the overflowing plastic bottles to fall all over the floor.

I gather up the bottles, carry everything out to the larger recyclable container outside, and dump it all in. On my way back inside, I step over a puddle. A puddle on a rain-free weekend?

Who left the hose on? I wonder, as I walk over to shut off the faucet and head back into the house.

Feeling productive, I realize that I’ve just prevented a fall on our stairs, a smell overtaking our second floor, a water stain, a finger amputation, a box of cereal from going stale, a starving kitty, a communicable disease from spreading via our phone and a higher water bill next month. I am one multitasking mama, I think as I walk with a get-‘er-done swagger.

“What took you so long?” Kevin asked, as I walked back out to the porch 15 minutes later. “I thought you were just starting a load of laundry.”

Oh crap.