Friday, February 1, 2008

"Survival Guide for Busy Moms: 50 ways to do everything faster and better."

WARNING: This post is extremely wordy and mostly useless. I just wrote it for my own entertainment. But it probably won't entertain you. So stop reading now, Busy Moms.

That is what one of the hooks on the MSN homepage read today. Because we're definitely not doing things fast enough or well enough, ladies.
I admit that I only skimmed the first twenty-five hints (If only I was getting things done faster, I would have had time to peruse all fifty.) It's not too important what they were; in fact, they were so predictable I figured I could actually make up twenty or thirty more: stuff like having apple slices and carrot sticks ready in the fridge so your kids can grab them, or put away clothes as complete outfits so you don't have to search through drawers, set the table for breakfast the night before, etc. What I'm getting at here is not the content of the ideas, but the underlying premise that we should get everything done faster AND better. If we could just get things done faster, we could do more things!
I apologize for the horrible sentence structure in the previous paragraph: I simply don't have time to go through and fix it, because I'm doing things so poorly and slowly.
Okay, I know I'm being a little extreme, I know the authors of this article are trying to be helpful, but something about the headline struck a nerve when I read it right after I waded through the living room to sit on the couch when I should have been doing things faster and better. So now that I've been so crotchety and mean, I'll move on to the NICE part of this post...which is, REAL tips I have learned from mom friends lately.
From Betsy, I've learned that you shouldn't let your toddler run around in restaurants; but purely by example, not by anything she said or any feeling of being judged. (Duh, I guess that's obvious to most of you, but we're not big on rules or structure or any of that stuff.)
From Adrienne, I just learned how to make the best post-nap-crankies-squelching snack ever, which is popcorn with nutritional yeast flakes with some apple slices thrown in, and she also adds cheese sticks, but I haven't tried that yet so I can't vouch for it.
From Marianne I have learned that the weight of two toddlers in a bike trailer pulled with a single speed bike through rain wind and hail is about that of a large horse (and by the way, Marianne, I haven't withdrawn your nomination for mother-of-the-year.) Also, I'm really out of shape!
If your name did not appear, it's not that I haven't learned from you, it's just that I'm out of time now because I've been doing things poorly and slowly all day.

1 comment:

Heather said...

I didn't know there was a pre-sliced carrot requirement!!! No wonder I feel so flustered.

That amazing bike ride to class - now that was commitment. A car would have been faster and better :)