I’ve decided to eat healthy again.
We’ve just had a long week and weekend of rewarding ourselves for getting through the day. It was more than that, actually. It’s incredibly counter-productive to have a birthday at the end of January, right during the time you’ve hit your stride with healthier living. You start off the new year on fantastic footing, getting your eating under control after the holidays, and then you’re bombarded with a birthday and the irresistible temptation to relax your food rules a little—take a day or maybe two days or maybe the whole week.
You can see how this quickly becomes a snowball.
I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it before, but this yearly struggle could likely be alleviated by starting my new year in February. And pretending Valentine’s Day doesn’t exist.
So here we are, a week past my birthday. I’m ready. Let’s do this.
No sugar for the next thirty days. A cleanse. My favorite thing to do.
Sunday night
I’ll start tomorrow. Tonight I’ll eat an entire container of Ben & Jerry’s delectable ice cream in my favorite flavor: “The Tonight Dough.”
Monday early early morning
The day unfolds like it’s stacked against me: with (surprise and oh, joy!) my monthly visitor. But I am strong. I can do this.
Monday early morning
Workout’s finished, it’s time to get the boys up for school. I can totally do this. Totally.
We race out the door, to walk the school boys to their elementary school three blocks down the road. My four-year-old twins don’t wait to cross the street, because they think, erroneously, that they’re competent at everything. They almost get run over. Now they have to hold on to the stroller, so they’re both wailing. One is refusing to move forward, so he gets to be carried. He weighs a lot. I already did my workout for the day, and now here’s another.
I deserve a reward. I resist.
We’re home. I let the twins race for the front door. They get there before me, which means they have an opportunity to do something real quick before I push inside with the stroller carrying their baby brother. The something they do is grab the markers their second-oldest brother left out this morning and color the piece of art he was drawing for me, which he was planning to finish after he got home from school. When I walk in, the one doing the coloring, which he should know, by now, he’s not supposed to be doing, after countless lectures about coloring on other people’s art, says, “My brother left this for me to color.” The picture is ruined, and not just a little bit. I send them outside to play.
I deserve a reward. I resist.
While they’re outside and I’m wrestling laundry out of the washer and into the dryer, the baby silently climbs the stairs and starts sticking his hand in the toilet, because this is one of the funnest entertainment ploys of all time—especially when it hasn’t been flushed, which is the terribly frequent state of most toilets in my house. I discover him, along with the mess he’s made, while I’m carrying clean clothes up the stairs, so I set to work cleaning. The twins peer in from outside and see that I’m not in the kitchen or anywhere they can see, because, to reiterate, I’m upstairs trying to wash the poop water off their baby brother’s hands. The two of them decide this would make the perfect opportunity to steal inside the house, rummage through the cabinets, and pour all the homemade cleaners into a gigantic hole they and their brothers have been digging in the backyard. That’s not enough, though. While I am still preoccupied with their brother and his disaster, they break into Husband’s shed and find a gasoline can.
A quick aside: This has happened before. There were consequences. They don’t care about the consequences. They break inside anyway.
Out comes the gasoline can, which they also pour into the gigantic hole. Husband was planning to use that gasoline to mow our lawn later today, because we got a note from our homeowner’s association saying it was a little out of hand. Also, there’s a shrub that needs trimming, the letter said. It didn’t say which one of the eight in our yard they believe needs trimming, so we’re just guessing. Unfortunately, it’s not the one the twins, after dumping all the cleaners and gasoline into this hole, decided to cut with the shears.
They are herded inside and told to sit on the bench at the kitchen table. They smell like pickled gas pumps.
I need a reward. I barely resist.
Monday lunch
The only time my sons are still and quiet is when they have food in front of their faces—and barely then.
After lunch, I wrestle them into bed, for a few hours of blissful nap time when I pretend I can’t hear the twins jumping off their bed and having a good old time before they crash in various chalk crime-scene positions on their floor or bed or wherever it is they collapse in utter exhaustion.
I don’t need a reward. I can do this.
Monday afternoon
Fighting, shrieking, complaining about homework, someone says he hates me, someone else says he wishes he had different parents, especially a different mom, like I can’t hear him, someone forgets to flush the toilet after a very loud unloading session on said toilet, making the whole downstairs smell like a sewage plant, someone else eats five apples without permission (which means he’ll probably need the toilet soon).
Why are kids so hard?
I need a reward. I…resist.
Monday dinner
They’re all complaining about dinner, and I am, too.
Why can’t we have pizza? they say.
I don’t know. I really don’t know anymore. Why are we doing this to ourselves? Why are we torturing ourselves and our children trying to eat the food that is good for us but takes twice as long to cook and four times as long to complain about and tastes like…
Oh. It tastes pretty delightful.
(So would cookies.)
I deserve a reward for cooking this amazing dinner.
No! I’ve made it all day!
Must…press…on.
Monday bedtime
After stories and brushing teeth (during which time someone lands a glob of spit and mint toothpaste in the middle of the mirror I just cleaned), we wrestle them into bed. Three times.
We have to visit the twins’ room four times, and the last time we enter, they’ve changed their clothes.
“Why did you change clothes?” I say.
“Because we accidentally peed,” one says.
I look around. The floor is clean.
“Where did you put your clothes?” I say.
“Under there,” the other says. He points under his baby brother’s crib, where, when I bend down to look under it, I see a whole wad of clothes. I gag. It smells like a horse pasture under here. I don’t think I even want to know.
I leave.
“Get back in bed,” I say to the older boys as I pass through.
And just when we think they’ve finally settled down and are actually going to sleep, one of them bursts into the room and tells us he accidentally brought all his drawing supplies up to the library and one of his brothers stepped on a drawing pencil and broke it and now he’s really, really sad.
I deserve the biggest reward.
I want to resist, but…
Monday before sleep
I’ll start the thirty days tomorrow.
It’s all good. I got this.
This is going to be easy.
This is an excerpt from Hills I’ll Probably Lie Down On, the fourth book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
