Multi-tasking To Extremes

All moms multi-task. It's a survival technique. But sometimes we just need to learn our limits. This actually happened a while back in a home that I know of.


The dog stinks. Bad. She needs a bath, and it was looking like a good time to do it. So I picked her up and carried her to the mud room sink. Oh look, there are buckets thawing to carry water to the stable and kennel.

I'd better start lunch, it's about noon.

Back to the buckets. The ice thawed enough to dump outside, so I threw the water out. (For all you Greenies out there, I was NOT going to recycle poopy water into my houseplants.) I wiped the buckets down and put them away for the swap-out with the next frozen batch.

Wait, the water should be boiling and the burger probably needs stirred. Put the pasta in the boiling water, and - whoa - the burger is nearly burned. Stir it up a lot and turn on the stove fan.

Find the dog and head back to the mud room. Commence to speed bathing the dog. Sure, she won't be the cleanest but she'll probably find something new to roll in within the day anyway.

Micah comes in and grabs a large black trash bag off the counter. What on earth could he use one of those for? "Micah, you don't need a trash bag." I may as well have been talking to the faucet. He walked out, did who knows what with it, and came back for another. I'm starting to get concerned here. He knows all about trash and loves helping with bags. Did he just dump a trash can on the floor trying to be helpful? If I go look quick the wet dog will jump out of the sink and streak across the house. Not an option.

The phone rings. Thankfully the dog is done but hasn't been toweled off yet. Wrap dog in towel, tuck under my arm and grab the phone. My shirt is now as wet as the dog. Hand phone off to daughter and towel dry dog. (Mentally wondering why on earth daughter did not get the phone to begin with.) Place towel in mud room laundry basket.

Stir pasta and rinse cooked burger. Drain pasta, mix all ingredients together, stir in sauce and notice a dog hair. Pick it out. Stir all things together. Notice another dog hair. Pick it out. Look down at shirt, see no dog hairs. Find yet another hair in the pasta.

I probably shouldn't have bathed the dog while trying to make lunch. I just won't tell the kids. They inhale things so fast that they probably won't notice what I didn't pick out. Unless of course they don't like lunch today, in that case I'm hosed.