The Longest Day

Phew… Did you feel that? That my fine friends was the longest day. It happened Tuesday but lets face it we were still feeling the reverb on Wednesday (umm…forgetting my purse after driving a half an hour to get somewhere..never did that before). I had some totally out of character things happen to me. I am chalking it all up to the longest day and starting fresh today!

Tuesday…
~First thing in the morning I planned to take everyone to my daughters swim practice….umm? Wrong day. Glad we caught that in time!
~Took all seven children cherry picking, which was really fun. We all enjoyed collecting 18lbs of cherries. Can you believe we have barely one colander left as of this morning?
~Took all of the kids to watch my two daughters hour long gymnastics class.

~Settling into a hopefully less active evening…my brother comes in like a bull in a China shop with a cooler of chicken. I spaced off that my husband had sent him to pick up our order from a local organic farmer. But oddly enough all the chickens were cut up and sorted by parts into giant bags. I couldn’t very well throw it in my freezer or I would have had a chickencicle of thighs and one of drumsticks. My brother was all flustered because the farmer had roped him into helping with the separating (thank God not the butchering…not that brother! oh my goodness talk about a hot mess!). So the entire time I am elbow deep in chicken the baby is screaming …but I can’t touch her because annointing my babies with e-coli and salmonella isn’t part of my belief system. So there she stands screaming like someone has lit her on fire…different kids are singing to her in hopes they can appease her. Not only is she not amused…she screams louder because just the fact they are trying to woo her from her mother is enough for her to really want to knock someones lights out. There I stand drenched in chicken with my Susie homemaker apron on sorting chicken like nothing is happening. Oh and every so often as I get a good rhythm going one of those Ziploc bags won’t open. I can’t grab it with my teeth because my chickeny hands have tried to no avail to pry it open so I wing it far enough so the baby isn’t drawn to it. The whole time all I want to do is scream…at my husband for scheduling this today, my brother for acting like the world was falling apart and for these singing kids and this shrieking baby…but I don’t…because I just have to get to the other side of this giant chaos. All the chicken is sorted and marked. I wash my hands and toss the messy apron directly into the wash. My oldest child nearly lunges to take all the chicken to the basement and be free of all of us. I swoop up the baby and disperse the kids to go and brush their teeth. I listen to the baby as she comes down from her crying, her little “uhhuh uhhuh”s mix with her wet cheeks on my shoulder as I lean back on the fridge. I glance at the oven…15mins! This whole screaming mess took fifteen minutes? It felt endless. I call my brother to offer some help in his chicken mess only to hear, when he answers, his car alarm is going off and his dog won’t stop barking. “What” he answers the phone knowing it’s me. I relay how it should only take him fifteen minutes to get through all the chicken and he doesn’t even have a screaming baby and I offer to come over and help. He declines but says he loves me as he yells at the dog to shut-up! I get off the phone with him and just laugh.
The longest day is kicking everyone in the soft spots.

How was your Longest Day? If you wrote a Longest Day Post I would love to read it. Please leave a link in the comments section. ~ T