Sep 22, 2014 3 min read

It seems that a Monday rarely comes that doesn’t involve mass chaos before the sun comes up. This week was no exception.

I awoke at 6:20 a.m. to start the day, which means I apparently hit the snooze button several times. The kids catch their bus right around 7 a.m. and are usually up by 6 a.m. Running late is never a great start to the week. I was already flustered by the time my feet hit the floor, but I quickly made my rounds to their bedrooms to rouse them.

My son wanted his lunch packed and requested leftover rigatoni. I was working on heating it to put into his thermos when I discovered the thermos was nowhere to be found. I began trying to find it while answering questions as varied as, “What’s for breakfast?” “Have you seen my shoe?” and “Is my hair straight in the back?” from my other two kids.

As I was digging through the cupboard in a mad search for the thermos, someone let the dog upstairs from the basement. He began chasing the cats through the house, and they showed their leaping prowess by jumping from floor-to-table-to-counter-to-windowsill with barely a pause between. The dog, knowing he was defeated, gave up chase to start eating their food instead. I don’t think he chewed a single piece, simply inhaling it like a vacuum cleaner.

Meanwhile, two of the kids made it to the table with a box of cereal and milk. The third was performing a frantic search of her own, as she was one shin guard short of a pair and had a game that afternoon. “I’m not going to be allowed to play without it,” she despaired.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t help her look just yet, because I blew a breaker from using the coffee pot, toaster and microwave at the same time. I dealt with that, switched the coffee pot back on and set the rigatoni on the counter. When I looked at the clock, I had to abandon my search for the thermos because it was too late to get the lunch packed anyway. I barely managed to get their teeth brushed before they were on their way out the door.

Finally, I asked about the shin guard. She gave up the search and was just planning to face the music with her coach. I quickly ran upstairs and dug through a bin of spare clothes. There, near the bottom, were her sister’s shin guards from last fall.

I raced back downstairs and tossed them to her over the porch railing just as the bus pulled up. Then I went back inside to grab the coffee that was finally ready and to sit down for a moment. Just then, I heard a noise in the kitchen. I discovered one of the cats knocked over a plant on the windowsill while trying to get back down and spilled potting soil into the bowl of rigatoni I heated.

Disgusted, I set it out on the back porch and let the dog finish it. He must still have had room, because he made short work of it. And true to form, he didn’t chew it, either.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.