Distraction Stations

Do you ever have one of those mornings where it seems like everything goes wrong? Last night, after another fitful night’s sleep – the cat has decided that there’s nowhere more comfortable to sleep than directly on top of me, and after three hours of him scratching at the door of the bedroom, I finally relented and let him in, only to have to keep gently pushing him off me so that I could breathe-slash-roll-over – I woke more or less on time and went to get Atlas out of bed.

He greeted me with an enthusiastic “ROAR!” (his new favourite noise; he may not be speaking, but I did start to wonder today if he’ll end up being a great foley artist?!), which lulled me into a false sense that the morning was going to go well. Which… I mean, I should have known something bad was coming.

The “something bad”, or, rather, the first “something bad” came in the form of a small pile of dog pee that I stepped in with my bare foot (Vinny is toilet trained, but occasionally wets in the house, and we don’t quite know if it’s a marking thing, or just because he really needs to go?!?) before immediately commencing clean-up, involving some rags (for soaking, to be binned immediately thereafter), Clorox wipes to clean the area, more towels (more soaking) and, finally, animal odour-eliminating Febreze, sprayed liberally all over the living area.

While I was busy cleaning, the baby – still roaring, delightedly, around the sitting room – discovered a can of Diet Coke his dad had left by the couch, unfinished, and proceeded to spill it on the carpet, as well as up his own sleeve, which resulted in much consternation.

Once I’d mopped up that spill, both on the carpet and up the sleeve, I decided to put the compost out for pickup – only for the bag to burst at the bottom, luckily while still more or less contained in the little kitchen compost bin because truly, if it had spilled on to the floor, I might have sat down and cried for the entire day.

It was, of course, only at that moment that I realised I’d forgotten to text his babysitter to tell her we’d be late today because he had speech therapy, rescheduled from Friday as his therapist is off tomorrow…

So it’s been A Morning.

I’m still mid-recovery – it’s a slow process, and I’m feeling quite frazzled, I’ll admit – but thought I’d take this opportunity to share some things I’ve been enjoying lately.