Extreme Multitasking!

When I was in Morocco in highschool I thought I had multitasking down. I could curl my hair with one hand while tying my shoe with the other, and pause to spray a cockroach with hairspray, all while singing along with my cassette. Yes. It kills them. The hairspray.

And when my kids were little, I could fix dinner while listening to a rambling story from a three year old ("Let me tell you about when I was 26!"), watch the child at the table do her homework, and write a grocery list all at the same time.

Then came the mom-of-teens, homeschooling years. (I'm still in this stage.) And I found this was a skill that could be taken to new levels. Teach them to drive while taking someone to dance, while texting the daughter at home to see if dinner is in the oven, while making sure junior in the back seat is doing his math.

And then... throw in being a single mom! And what do you get? Extreme Multitasking! The all new, high thrill sport for moms with negative time!

Consider Saturday.

Plans had already been derailed by 9 am when I realized Bethany had to see a doctor asap for her asthma. The pediatrician's phone was totally not working- so plan A (call for a refill of her inhaler Rx) was not going to work. We put plan B into effect: Insta Care place. Should be quick. All we need is a script for an inhaler.

After over an hour sitting in the room waiting for the doctor and listening to my daughter wheeze, I stick my head in the hall to find the doctor lounging with the nurse, going through an iHop menu. But I digress. My point is not about doctors and nurses and iHop-- although that could be a subject for another post. The point is, we missed the violin group lesson we were supposed to be to, and by that afternoon I realized the inhaler was not going to be enough. She needed a trip to the ER for nebulizer meds and steroids.

I figured all this out about 1 pm as I was putting dinner in the oven. (New meal plan! More on this later.) And at 2 pm I was supposed to be meeting for the first time with the girl I will be tutoring this year. First impressions being what they are, I didn't want to start off the year with, "Umm... I'll be a little late. Or, actually, probably very late. Depending on the doctors at the ER. And the iHop menu." But I also didn't want to leave Bethany home, unable to breathe. "Just call 911, sweetie, if you get any worse. Or text me. I should be home soon."

My plan? Throw all three kids in the car, call the tutoring family while driving to their house and ask if I can stop by a little early (a better first impression than being several hours late), then call a friend to see if the younger two can hang out with her while we're at the ER. Drop the kids off at the friend's house after the tutoring meeting, then hit the ER.

I tell kids to get on shoes and grab books to read while dialing my friend. I get her answering machine and start leaving a message, wondering if she's home but couldn't find the phone. Where could she be? Then, mid-sentence- I remember. She's gone for the day and asked me to take her dogs out around lunch time or 1 o'clock! I sputter something about having a good day and hang up, then run upstairs and grab the DS games. Apparently the kids are all going to the ER. Whoopie!

In the car, I call the tutoring family, who sounds a bit confused but says, "Umm, sure. I guess now would be fine." Thank heavens.

I park 5 houses down in the only spot of shade on the street and leave the key with Bethany and instructions to turn on the AC if it gets too hot. She's wheezing, but nods. I sprint past 5 houses and tell the grandma watering her roses, who looks like she's expecting me to stop and talk, that I'm just borrowing her neighbor's shade, and that her tiny white dog with a pink bow in its hair is cute.

The tutoring family is great. Nice daughter. Nice mom. Really nice house. 15 minutes later I'm back out the door, past Grandma, the roses, and Poopsie, and in the car. Bethany's eyes are closed. I peal out of there, heading to my friend's to take out the dogs before the ER.

But... As I'm driving up Cardinal I suddenly see my oven in my mind. And the casserole I'd put in the oven just before realizing Bethany needed to go to the ER. Ack!

I drive home, watching for police in my rear-view mirror, run inside and grab the casserole out of the over. It was only slightly more brown than was intended. I set it on the counter and stared at it. Do my kids actually need to eat?

This is where I explain our new meal plan. We eat our big meal-- the all-together-dinner-type thing-- around 3 or 4 pm. This makes sense for lots of reasons, not the least of which is because that's the only time we're all home. Then we have cookies and milk or microwave popcorn or a quick frozen pizza around 9 pm when we're hungry again. It works for us. At least that's the theory. I just started it on Saturday.

So, I'm staring at the casserole. Chicken and broccoli. I run through all the possible scenarios in my mind, and decide the best plan is to just take it with us.

So I grab a couple of dish towels to put it on, pick up the Costco-sized bag of paper plates (no time to count them out), grap a handful of plastic forks and one plastic spoon, and run back to the kids waiting in the car.

"What are you doing?"

"Bringing dinner. Why?"

"Do you expect us to walk into the ER with a casserole?"

"Don't be silly. We're going to eat it while taking out our friend's dogs."

"If there is any left over, can I bring it to the hospital? I'll eat quietly."

We let the dogs out while eating our casserole on paper plates in our friend's house while Bethany lay on their couch and wheezed and I calculated how much I'd make from tutoring and called back the electrician about the lights in the front room while watching out the window to see if the dogs had done their thing yet. The plastic spoon made a decent serving spoon, and the tiny size kept our portions small. I made a mental note to try this at home for myself as I told Peter to refill the dogs' water dish, told Naomi to call the dogs inside, and I checked to make sure Bethany was still breathing.

And I thought about the fact that, although I really miss my calling in the stake Relief Society, I was glad I was not one of the people in charge of the reception that evening.

This is my life. Not too unusual. For our house, anyway.

When Bethany was well-medicated, the casserole was gone, and the kids were back home with instructions to practice the violin songs they'd missed at the group lesson that morning, I put on a skirt and went to the reception. I arrived just as it was ending and wondered if my hair was still sticking out in back like Bethany had said it was in the ER. Probably so.

My friends smiled and said, "How are you?"

And I smiled and said, "Fine. Kind of a crazy day."

And they nodded. "I know what you mean."

And I wondered if they really did.

The Story of Carly

My cat is curled up beside me, resting her tiny chin on my foot. Her eyes are closed and her breathing is in slow little breaths. At moments like this, even if my computer is about to die because it's not plugged in, or I am so desperate to go to the bathroom that I'm squirming, or the pizza is burning in the oven, I look at her and think, "But I don't want to disturb her!"

I know people get carried away with their pets. Dogs getting manicures and cats with an entire wing of the house to themselves seem a bit much when we are not the ones in love.

This particular cat came to us in an unusual way. We drove to church one Sunday morning in April, and after services, we drove home again. When we got out of the car, my family members said, "What is that noise in the engine?" I groaned. Car trouble. Great. I informed them that I did not even want to know about it and went inside to change out of my dress. A moment later one of my kids was banging on my bedroom door shouting, "Mom! You've got to come see! It's a cat!" My eyes flew to the bedroom door. Oh, this is going to be a mess, I thought. A cat got stuck in our engine? And the kids are down there to see it? I steeled myself, prepared to be the brave mother who holds her traumatized children as they weep over dismembered kitty parts.

But when I got downstairs, there was my husband, leaning into the greasy car engine in his white church shirt, saying, "It's all right, kitty kitty." This is the same man who had claimed for years not to like cats. Until he rescued our grey cat, Brigitta, who had been hit by a car, and spent thousands of dollars to have her restored to health. His story that he couldn't stand cats began to unravel after that. And now he coaxed a tiny, tiny kitten out of the engine of our car, where she had been sitting in one of the few places where she could have lived on the five mile ride home. I breathed a sigh of relief. She was all in one piece.

And she was tiny! I mean, even for a kitten. She fit in the palm of a child's hand and mewed so pitifully that we were all making little squeaky sounds back at her out of sympathy. Someone got some milk and someone else got a few bits of cat food. The kitten tried to eat a piece of the food, but she was so small that it was like watching a two-year-old try to fit a whole Five Guys hamburger in their mouth and then chew. I did some quick emotional calculations and realized there was no way this kitten was going anywhere. Darn it all.

We already had two cats and a dog, and though I was feeling animal overload, I felt like we were still within the "normal" limits of animal ownership. But THREE cats? That's getting a bit fanatic. And yet, look at her! they all exclaimed. She fit in a tea cup. I know, because they put her in one and took pictures. Rachel carried her in the pocket of her bathrobe, where the kitten slept with her head just poking out, resting on the lip of the pocket. And Bethany claimed ownership, bringing the kitten to sleep on her bed with her. How could I say, after she lived through a ride home in our engine and had been fed milk with an eye dropper and slept on Rachel's pocket, "Nah. Take her back to the field beside the church. Or drop her off at the shelter." So, we acquired a third cat. We named her Carly, since she was found in the engine of the car.

Something about being raised by people made Carly into a different beast. She is fine with having people maul her. Her paws, which most cats will not let anyone touch, are so soft, and she just lays in our arms like a baby and closes her eyes as we stroke them. She talks to us, mewing and making little sounds in her throat to communicate things like, "Milk would be good! It's right in this fridge!" and if she gets stuck in the garage overnight or shut in the bathroom for too long, she tells us all about it when she gets out, talking and talking and asking to be held and comforted after her traumatic ordeal. She loves our dog, Heidi, and rolls all over Heidi's muzzle and licks Heidi's face until the dog can stand no more and gets up to walk away. And anytime we're gathered as a family, Carly comes to join us. She is there for scripture reading, bedtime stories, songs and prayers, and any other time we are all together, curled up beside us with her eyes closed, looking like the world is a good place.

She is still small for a full-grown cat, although it's been a few years since we found her. And Bethany still hauls her around, snuggling her and exclaiming, "She is so CUTE!" when she find sher asleep somewhere. Right now, Carly is curled beside my feet, looking like she is sound asleep-- until I lean over to look at her more closely. Then her ears turn toward me and I know she's just resting, apparently enjoying my company as much as I enjoy hers.