I’m a Hot Mess and I’m Cool With That

I was driving to Thursday night church a few weeks ago, already five minutes late as I usually am. The baby had a blowout before we left and then I couldn’t find her a matching sock after she’d thrown the original pair. The older two were bickering in the back of the car and I never actually got a chance to eat my dinner. As I saw all of these things circling in a thought bubble over my head like some kind of cartoon, I began to giggle. I finally figured out what a hot mess was and I said, out loud to myself through laughter, “I am a hot mess!”

For a few years now, I’ve heard the term “hot mess” but I never really paid attention to it. It was a suddenly common thing to say that I was completely oblivious to, like “on fleek” or “lit” or “Netflix and chill”. I thought if something is a mess, it’s a mess, what’s with the adjective? It didn’t join my vocabulary because as an overthinker, I didn’t get it. Until that day when I realized that this word most perfectly described me.

Maybe the adjective is because this is no normal mess. This mess is way messier than other messes, in the way that garbage smells worse on a hot day. I am definitely a mess that is of mild to scalding temperature…but I’m okay with it.

I volunteer at church every week but I am never there early and everybody knows it. No matter how early I try to get things ready, life goes awry. Shoes can’t be located, dinner wasn’t cooked by the time the recipe promised it would be, stains are made on clean clothes within moments of walking out the door. I make birthday presents by hand, with love, three weeks after your birthday passed. The heart and soul is always there, if you can look through the disaster. And I can.

I can laugh when the car breaks down after I’ve finally scheduled that play date with the friend whose texts I kept forgetting to respond to. I can smile when the baby adorably stomps around in my shoes and then I can’t find them the next day. What else can I really do?

I go to bed dreaming about how I’m going to do so much better tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will put an end to the chaos. Tomorrow, I’m going to get up early and get caught up on all of my posts and then I will clean all of the bedrooms to spotless. Then, I’ll be on the kids every day to clean up when they finish playing. We’ll make a meal planning board and know exactly how long to cook dinner. All diapers will be changed a half hour before it’s time to be somewhere. I’ve got all of the answers when I’m supposed to be sleeping.

Morning comes. It comes at 2am when the baby gets up and then at 5am when she gets up again. I’ll just close my eyes for another minute… Morning comes again at 7am when I wake to hear the older two girls screaming at each other at the top of their lungs. Getting up early is out.

I’ll get right to work though, there is still time to get caught up on my work. Right after I argue with my nine year old about why she’s not allowed to wear shorts in the winter and explain to my seven year old why a piece of cheese is not lunch, even though we have these conversations every day. Kisses and love, they’re off to school and now I can finally… oh wait, the baby is trying to climb on the kitchen table. Now she’s trying to eat the cat food. That’s okay, we can put that on the counter. I can still work through his meowing in protest. After all, he does deliberately go into her room to meow immediately after we put her to bed at night.

They go into the bedroom to play and I can get something done now. Funny how writer’s block works, it seems as though I can’t come up with something productive to say after all of this. I’ll share someone else’s recipes because Lord knows, I’m not going to get to try them. Oh good, they’re fighting over who had some random toy first, even though yesterday they didn’t even know this toy existed for the last four years. I go to break up the fight which, by the way, looks like something out of a cartoon where they’re spinning in a big circular cloud of dust.

fight cloud(I couldn’t find some free clipart so I decided to doodle this for you as accurately as possible, with a few broken crayons that I managed to scrounge up from the debris!)

I try to remove my son from the room, trip over all of the toys left in the doorway, and he goes flying into the wall. He looks at me, horrified, and all that flies out of my mouth is, “Now see, that wouldn’t have happened if you cleaned up like I told you!”

It’s about that time to have a chat with my husband while he’s working, he loves those. (Read: Sarcasm) Could this have waited until you got home? Why, yes, if you wanted me to be a puddle on the floor.

(I’ve always wanted the opportunity to use a picture of Alex Mack…) Photo credit: Buzzfeed

He says some encouraging things that you’d probably find on a cat poster but they make me feel better because they came from him, my rock. Oh also, he’s no longer interested in what we planned for dinner. I’ll take out something else that he won’t eat because he hates my cooking but I’m going to make something he likes every day forever because I love him and I don’t give up! Another cat poster.

I’ve finally got a post rolling out of me. To achieve this, I am pretending that the world around me is not happening. Even though in my peripheral vision, I can see the baby pouring out the box of cereal that the girls apparently left out before they went to school and I was so focused on working that I didn’t notice. It’s time to abandon work, I’m obviously leaving my house in a disarray that I can longer ignore.

cerealLive on the scene.

So where do I start? I could do the laundry but first I have to clean off the couch so I have room to fold everything. As I’m clearing the couch, I realize that it’s become a catch-all for tons of things that I don’t even know what to do with. If I throw out these bills, he will have a fit. So I put them on his desk, which he immediately moves back to the couch when he gets home. Or I’ll find them on the floor tomorrow because the baby grabbed them before he did. Apply this mobile mess to everything we own. We could buy a bigger house but I think the messes will just grow up and become bigger messes. (I meant the literal messes but this could also apply to the humans…)

They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results but what if it’s just the way you respond to it? I’m not going to stop trying to organize our chaos but I’m not going to feel miserable and guilty about it either. People are always saying how I’ve got it all together and I’m “supermom” but that’s because I’ve got a genuine smile on my face. It’s not because I’m some child-rearing expert and model wife with an impeccable home.

It’s fine that the baby just pooped all over my new clothes in public (that happened on Mother’s Day last year!). They’re just clothes and I own stain sprays. That meme “But did you die?” is kind of my entire attitude toward life You’re alive, they’re alive.

butdidyoudie

I’m a beautiful, HOT MESS, and it’s totally fine. If my life were a sitcom, I’d be hysterically laughing, so why shouldn’t I laugh now? Solidarity, hot mess moms! You’ve got this!

2 thoughts on “I’m a Hot Mess and I’m Cool With That

  1. If we did not have some days like this one there would be something wrong with the way we are raising our kids. No one is perfect and all we can do is try our best and accept that it won’t always turn out the way we wanted it .

  2. Someone once said that “there is great purpose in our struggles in life”. I think being hot messes once in awhile qualifies for that! I love your humor and your outlook! I’d love to post this on #MyPostMonday and tweet about it! I loved this post and I’m sure more people would love to check it out!

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