I still haven’t recovered.

I still have a bag of “take camping” toys in the garage that need to be cleaned up and reintegrated with the rest of the toys. I still haven’t found my favorite travel mug. I am still finding sand in my running shoes.

And…I am still doing laundry.

I can unequivocally state that laundry, above all other things, is the true bane of my existence. More than bad drivers. More than rude service people. More than junk mail. More than unexpected dog crap on a sidewalk. More than the abusive amount of meetings I deal with at work…well…wait…maybe not more than that.

OK, I can unequivocally state that laundry is the bane of my existence at home.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not adverse to typically household chores. I don’t mind vacuuming, or cleaning out closets, or pulling weeds, or grocery shopping, or taking out the garbage. What tortures me about laundry is the sheer futility of it. The laundry is never really done. Unless you are doing laundry naked, you are creating more laundry even as you pre-treat your “last” load. Laundry is not something that I can pass off to Paul. Careful use of Shout is not his forte. With a 2 and 4 year old this could easily become a very expensive and stain-setting situation.

In an average week, I do approximately eight loads of laundry, including towels and sheets. I rarely have the energy to tackle it during the week. When I do, it usually results in me forgetting that clothes is still sitting in either the washer or dryer, requiring me to rewash the forgotten load because of mustiness or an extreme wrinkle situation (my disdain for laundry extends to a deep hatred of ironing).

This leaves me with no option but to start laundry on Friday night and finish it sometime before crawling off to bed on Sunday night. As a result, any time spent traveling away on the weekends creates a laundry backlog that rivals that of the US Postal Service on the 21st of December. Add to this the filthy contamination that occurs with camping gear and it becomes clear why, after three weeks, I am still digging out of a giant pile of laundry. Backlog upon backlog upon backlog.

The result has been great. I don’t always get it right, but I definitely feel like a more present parent and partner. I also  started to feel like my old self again. And, more importantly, I now feel more confident that, going forward, I’m going to be more aware and conscious of keeping this going in the future.

It was with this in mind that I started to wonder where I would be in 10 or 20 years. Maybe its because my parents are both retired. Maybe its because I have a fantasy about doing really interesting consulting work. Maybe its because my oldest is about to enroll in preschool, and well…preschool is practically college, you know.

So, I started to think about mothers who I knew who had charted their own course while keeping their family a priority. And, well…I came up with…um…nothing. It was kind of like trying to think of a couple that has been married for 25 years and are still giddy in love.

So then I started to think about moms I don’t know, but know of. Hmmmm…Katie Couric? Hillary Rodham Clinton? Angelina Jolie? Marge Simpson?

To say the least, I felt handicapped in this exercise.

And then I found myself surfing the net—or more appropriately—surfing the mindless pop culture gossip sites that I frequent when I am feeling mindless. It was in between clicks, I found out that Madonna is on tour again.

I was the exact demographic for Madonna in the 80s. I even saw her in concert when I was in the 8th grade. In fact, I still have the concert program. I plan to sell it on eBay someday. It’s still in very good condition.

As I was clicking through the pages about her concert kickoff I was thinking that Madonna really does seem to have it all. She has reinvented herself more times than I can count. That must keep her job interesting. Never mind the fact that she has built a massive Madonna brand that she can cash in on for the rest of her life. She lives in the country in England (I would love to have a home in the English countryside). She’s married to someone who appears to be decent human being. Her kids seem normal (except for those eyebrows on poor Lourdes).  And, she is in phenomenal shape.

The only problem with Madonna is that she now looks like a very talented, impeccably put together drag queen. This would be totally fine if she was a drag queen. But…well…she isn’t.

And then there was me. I was the crazy lady yelling at her kids.

Sigh.

Let me back up. This trip was my idea. I conceptualized it, sent out an email invite to friends, reserved the campsites, coordinated all of the prep and packing, etc., etc. I love camping, especially at the coast. Especially when we can poach part of our friend’s tent trailer and sleep on a mattress instead of the ground.

Now, stop wrinkling your nose. I used to backpack 5 miles into the hills for “roughing it” camping. That was all BK (before kids). Now, it is more important to be well-rested and comfortable. Well-rested so that, apparently, I can reserve my energy to spend the entire next day shaking my head, talking to myself, and…well…yelling at my kids.

Don’t get me wrong. The trip was great. Everyone had fun. We decompressed and relaxed. We laughed. We played on the beach.

However, my kids have suddenly learned to erode every layer of patience that I have been building up for all of my 35 years. It was in-cred-i-ble the number of situations the two of them could find to fight over or get under my skin about. There were fights over sharing, over who could walk the dog, over who got to sit in the red kid’s chair (it was exactly like the other red chair—I did this on purpose, I’m no rookie), over wanting a hot dog not chili, over wanting to wear crocs not sneakers, over wanting to take a shower with Dad not Mom, over not wanting to take a nap, over and over and over and over.

Ugh.

Paul and I were totally defeated. We sounded like disengaged, cranky parents. No, wait…we were disengaged cranky parents.

Thank goodness our friend Shannan was there. She was awesome at redirecting the kids and getting them to tow the line. More than once, she intervened to break up a squabble. She did this long after I was numb to the fighting and whining. So numb I did nothing–not even yell. Now, her three-year-old was doing his best to drive her over the edge, but with my girls…she was wonderful. 

So, maybe it’s true..it does take a village to raise a child.