Nothing in moderation...

I have officially had enough of the snot, sore throats and wracking coughs afflicting the adults of the Mean Mommy household. Shouldn't I be granted some kind of special immunity, being the sole provider of care for three small children? That's a design flaw I'd say, God. I also can't wait for this little gem to filter it's way down to the offspring and then I can spend one of the last few precious weeks of school with at least one of them home and in my company constantly.

Fortunately, I only experienced the cough and a poorly-timed pulled neck muscle (Little Man's new favortie game is flinging his arms around my neck while I dress him, lifting up his legs and squealing, "I HANG ON YOU!"), making rest and some extended couch time the only remedy I needed. Since the children have remained healthy thus far, I was able to do this during Little Man's naptime and lie round watching all the Wendy Williams I had in the DVR hopper and sleep like the dead. I was also able to eat my way through half the pantry - Chips Ahoy, peanut butter (put in a bowl, I was sick after all), Entemann's donuts, bags of Pirate's Booty (thank you Robert's American for making it possible for me to eat a whole bag of what are, essentially, Cheetos with no guilt since they're organic), pretzels dipped in cream cheese (a college favorite, please refer to the picture I posted previously and you now understand why I was fat). Feed a cold, indeed.

Days like these bring to light the fact that I have absolutely no ability to live my life in moderation. I go at everything full tilt. I am either working myself into an early grave existing on six hours of sleep and too much caffeine, or lying prostrate, full of empty carbohydrates, with my thumb changing the channel on the remote as the only sign of life. I have only two modes, "On" and "Off". In "On" mode, I am up at the crack of dawn to run, I clean my house maniacally, steam vegetables for the kids' dinner while I supervise the children playing Play-doh at the kitchen table. In "Off" mode, I sleep until seven, do not work out, barely manage to empty the dishwasher, and feed the kids a dinner of Gorton's fishsticks that have been in the freezer since we moved into the house, that they will consume in the family room while watching a Pixar movie, as I sit in the arm chair reading a book. Occasionally there is wine involved, but not until Daddy gets home.

I have been this way all of my adult life, toggling between these two modes of being, and academic life, as well as a career as a teacher, were both well suited for this particular mindset. Pushing and pushing and pushing yourself until the next vacation or long weekend were par for the course. My work life is pretty constant now and even though the scenario involving the fish sticks described above is considered a day "Off" for me, I have to be "On" almost all the time. There's no two week vacation. But there is ample opportunity for me to switch gears. My house can be as clean as an operating room or as dirty as a pig sty. The kids can be painting, crafting and playing board games, or they can all three be on the computer, watching TV and playing the Wii simultaneously. Most days are a blend of both gears, and I applaud the one area in which I have found some moderation in my life. But if H gets a text about there being no dinner, it's because I have hit the power switch on the day.

And while raising them has brought some balance to my otherwise high-low life, the way I dress post-kids is a new area where the gap between "On Mary" and "Off Mary" can be seen. Pre-kids, my weekday wardrobe was all slacks, tops from Banana Republic, and stacked loafers and the hair was blown out daily (pre-coloring years, obviously, as my colorist would have had a stroke). Weekends were a variation on that theme, with a skirt of dress thrown in for an night out. Post-kids, as you all know, "weekday Mary" dons yoga or cargo pants daily, and scrapes her hair into a bun, and on the bad days, her Yankee hat. The weekends though, my hair is blown out and my more delicate clothes get to see the light of day as I actually have more then three minutes to shower and I am not in charge of shitty diapers Saturday and Sunday. And while I tromp around town in flip-flops and sneakers weekdays, on the weekends I cripple myself in heels and impractically high boots. Daddy can chase you all around, thank you very much. People I only know from "work", i.e. moms from school I don't hang out with socially, have actually had trouble recognizing me in my weekend state. One in particular, calls it my "Wonder Woman" persona. I wish spinning around with my arms akimbo was all I needed to dry this mass of hair.

Another change associated with the weekend - booze. I indulge more often and in greater quantities of wine, and though I joke about my frequent consumption, I am not really much of a weeknight drinker. Know why? Because if I'm going to drink, I will want to have more then one glass and that makes getting up so damn early more of a hell than it already is. So Monday through Friday (OK, Thursday), I'm pretty much a teetotaler. Even in college, you would not see me in the bars, except for Saturday night, throwing back kamikaze shots dancing to "Let's Talk About Sex". And while this might be the signal of a drinking problem, I do know my limits and really don't like to be too drunk. I am rarely the drunkest one at the party, but am usually the loudest and the first one to start dancing, sometimes when it's questionably appropriate. Although my friends and I have come up with a term we call Alcohol Regret Syndrome, where you were not really that drunk, but you were definitely too honest with someone and you spend the whole next day wanting to die of shame after telling your friend she really needs to stop wearing those low-rise pants.

And then there's food. You are all way too familiar with my love of food and the mass quantities I would eat on a daily basis if fitting into my jeans were not an issue. Watching my eldest eat is proof that it was a case of nature rather than nurture that created this voracious appetite. My daughter CAN EAT. She's picky about what foods, but when surrounded by unlimited quantities of her favorite things she can pack it away. Thank God she's still growing and hopefully she will be blessed with a high metabolism, but I see shades of myself as she asks me for a fourth piece of pizza or a third cookie, as I myself as child would eat myself sick and still can to this day. As and adult, I have to plan around it. I eat the in the Spartan manner I do Monday through Friday (seriously this time about Friday though) just so I can eat whatever the hell I want all weekend such as H's amazing cooking, lunches at Friendly's, and lots of wine and desserts. I don't know if this is good nutritional planning or a sign of an eating disorder. All I know is when I am eating something really, really good, I don't want to be bothered thinking with thoughts like, "I should really stop, this has a lot of calories." I wish I could be one of those people who has dessert every single night in small, savoring portions. Or one of those people who take fifteen minutes to eat a cookie (I'm looking at you, Sasha), but it ain't gonna happen. Eating that way seems like a trial of patience and self-control, and when the entirety of my life is based on subduing my own impulses and desires for the good of others, control is the last thing I want when dealing with baked goods. I think you can really categorize people by whether, when given a handful of M&Ms, they eat them one at a time or shove them all in their mouth.

So while I may lament, at times, I can not live my life at a constant speed, I think my nature has served me well. They say parenting is a marathon, not a sprint. I disagree. I spend my entire day sprinting between schools and activities, followed by quiet periods reading to Little Man or taking walks with #2 . And children, by nature drive you to the extremes, requiring snail-like slowness when teaching potty training at home, and cheetah-like speed when test-driving it in public. Within the space of two minutes, a kid can be smothering you with hugs, then driving you to the brink of insanity with requests for cookies before eight in the morning. I wish I could say I was one of those sweet, June Cleaver moms, who responds to everything in the same pleasant tone of voice, but you all know that's not true. Frankly, I think my kids would find it scary if I responded to one of them smacking the other with anything other than a swift, loud reprimand. And I think they like it when I declare it a day off in without so many words and we have pizza unexpectedly in the middle of the week or they get an extra half an hour of TV. Maybe they'll be writing a book about their Sybil of a mother someday though.

It's a crap shoot.