1) gravity, 2) entropy, 3) the bizarre covalent bond that exists between children and any puddle of water within 10 feet, and 4) mommy guilt.
In Dante’s Divine Comedy there’s a special circle of purgatory reserved for the burning off of mommy guilt. I think it involves flaming piles of laundry and I expect to spend a few millennia there. Here are just a few of the reasons why.
Some things I’m feeling guilty about right now
1. I’m really good at remembering to take my vitamin every day, but really bad at remembering to make my kids take theirs. They are probably going to develop scurvy and goiters any day now.
2. I have been enjoying this blog thing so much that I tend to spend far too much time on it....when I should be doing about 20 million other things instead.
3. Helium balloons never last long in our house because after a day or two I bring about their untimely death with a pair of scissors. I do this partly because I just get sick of having the sad things following me around the house like ghost-heads and partly because eventually my husband is going to teach the kids his trick of inhaling helium to sound like Mickey Mouse and I’d like to postpone this as long as possible.
4. I try to read to my children every night, but sometimes I make them comb my hair while I’m reading to keep me awake.
5. I own a flour mill, a Bosch mixer and a 25 lb. bag of wheat but I can’t remember the last time I made whole wheat bread. Add to this the fact that I keep buying Granny’s Own Fluffy Pasty White bread at the store because the kids like it. Toasted with lots of butter and sugar and cinnamon. I can just hear the cavities forming.
6. I have been known to serve cold cereal for dinner. Forget serve. I basically just said “help yourselves and good luck finding a clean bowl.” In my own defense I’m sure I was having a stressful day and I’m sure I made a crockpot roast with vegetables and home made rolls the next night to atone for it. At least I think I did.
7. I eat my kids’ Halloween candy.
8. My mother did craft projects with us all the time. I’m sure I remember making flowers from tissue paper and painting on canvas with acrylic paint. My idea of a craft project lately is to put a few cups of playdough on the back porch with the instructions “Enjoy! And don't forget to clean it all up when you’re finished.”
9. Sometimes when faced with a pair of ultra filthy socks or poop-stained toddler underwear, I don’t get out the bleach and I don’t scrub them with hot water. I just throw them in the garbage.
This is me.
I know, you didn’t realize that Michelangelo put my portrait into his Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel but he did. Unfortunately I am on my way to hell and not looking my best, but I think Michelangelo captured the guilty expression pretty well, don’t you?
Tags: parenting, guilt, michelangelo, mommy
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5 comments:
I do the same thing with dirty underwear. In fact, I've had other people's children that I'm babysitting mess their pants and my house and I throw theirs away too-David gets mad at this because I've rummaged through his underwear drawer and used a pair of his clean ones as a replacement. No one has ever noticed or said anything but then I suspect they're feeling the guilt of having a child mess their pants at someone else's house.
Wow, your really have a lot you need to work on. I never do any of those things. :)
I read the other day somewhere (that elusive somewhere) that kids vitamins don't do that much for them...maybe that's false, but it makes me feel better!
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!
I figure if I'm particularly evil, I'm going to the special circle of purgatory reserved for bad programmers (I believe Dante said it includes the souls of "he that useth a goto in C++").
The devils lead the bad programmer to a huge computer and sit him down at a terminal.
With a slight smirk they say, "You can leave as soon as you fix this one bug. By the way, it's an intermittent bug, it happens about once every 1000 times you try it."
Just as the programmer thinks this can't be too hard, as long as the computer is reasonably fast, he raises his eyes and sees the behemoth is actually built of thousands of panels of vacuum tubes stretching off into the distance...
"Noooooooo!"
Of course, I'll never go there, because as a parent, I've never done any of these dreadful things Julie mentions!
I am guilty of 1, 2, 6, 7 and 9 also, plus a whole slew of others. At least it will be fun in Mommy guilt hell.
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