Single Mother by Choice – 24 Hours of Fun

During the week, I am typically quite busy (like most of us). I am up early with my mini, age 2, and we frantically attempt to arrive at yoga practice by 6:30am. Despite every strategy, preparation, approach or early morning alarm, this has yet to happen more than one time in my years of practice. Weekends are when we relax, right? Right. It’s so relaxing. I recently went through a 24 hour period of time where I experienced all 99 emotional problems, total chaos, moments of love and at least one anxiety attack. Being a single mother by choice is such a wonderful gift. It’s positive and fun in so many ways. So fun. I admit, however, it is quite a bit of work. I selected the most relaxing portion of the weekend, noon on Saturday to noon on Sunday, to describe an average weekend. 24 hours of fun, to be exact.

Saturday. Noon.

I’ve been awake for at least forever. I have a vague recollection of 5am Paw Patrol. I am drinking coffee and organizing my day of fun. Do I start with the dishwasher? The laundry? Cleaning the house? Or I could get wild and do my online banking and a bit of web design.

My final option is cooking; my least favourite. I cook one day per week; typically Saturdays. I cook as much as I can (which is limited to about 10 foods), put them in abnormally small containers and fill my freezer with lunch food for my daughter. By the end of the weekend, she typically has containers of corn, rice, a poorly made soup and chicken fingers. I haven’t cooked solely for myself since 2015.

Friendship angels

A good friend of mine, Lindsay, sent me a text asking if I needed a bit of help. These are the most kind, amazing gestures I receive; an offer to come over and help me with life. I am so lucky to have friends who help me out with my daughter and with my sanity. She arrives around 1pm and I ask her if it would be ok to run an errand; the post office. I needed to mail a Christmas gift for a friend. Yes, it is February. And yes, it was for Christmas of last year.

My mini is more than happy to stay with Auntie Lindsay; she is filled with love, maternal instinct and she cooks very well. Even my two year old hates my cooking. I don’t blame her though. I’m trying to show her how to order pizza but we’re not quite there yet. I set out in my car and as I pull out of my driveway, a strange feeling fills my body. I evaluate the feeling with curiosity. My hands begin to shake and my arms become tingling, jelly-like appendages. I drive for a few minutes and the unusual sensation continues. My entire body is going through some kind of shaky fit. WTF.

What is this sensation

Hunger. This unusual sensation is hunger. I attempt to recall the last time I ate food. There was that crust. I think I ate an old piece of ham that I referred to as bacon. The mini fed me an unknown chunk of her breakfast somewhere between Paw Patrol and coffee number four. I begin to think about cheeseburgers. Confirmed. I am hungry. No…I am fucking starving. How could I not notice this?

Not giving a shit in the slightest as to why I didn’t notice, I find the closest location that makes cheeseburgers and it is gone in two bites. I feel considerably better. That was weird and sudden. I head to the post office, enjoying the quiet solitude of my childless, dogless car and even the post office feels like a Disney World adventure. So quiet. So easy when you have two hands to work with and no toddler attempting to back tuck out of my arms. Lovely! I love the post office!

The fun really begins

After finishing my exciting Saturday errand, I drive back to my house to find the mini happily playing with Lindsay. The house smells like food (that is well cooked) and I am filled with gratitude for her help. The dog has not been walked in quite some time. I make sure the Lindsay-Mini team is ok, put on my fake Uggs and go for a completely unplanned 5k sprint. I truly dart out of the house like it’s on fire, dragging my twelve year old dog behind me. Let’s go pup.

I have not jogged in sixteen years. The dog runs on a leash like a drunk person trying to walk a straight line. Across the front and back of my body as I desperately attempt to run off my stress in -20 degree weather. We run down alleys, streets, through a hockey rink and back to the house in slushy snow. Upon returning home, the dog collapses in exhaustion and I realize that running with no hat makes your brain freeze. I then experience ten minutes of brain freeze and thawing of my skull.

A restful nap

At this stage, I’m looking pretty ragged. My friend asks if I need a nap. So sweet of her. I tell her no, I’m doing awesome (I’m lying on the couch holding my head and grunting). In her wisdom and kindness, she tells me to just lie down. Perhaps not a nap but a rest would be nice. Intriguing. A rest WHILE my child is at home. This is new and I have no manual on how this works.

I venture to my room and lie down on my back. I put a black scarf over my face and take a deep breath, expecting to feel a sense of relaxation and comfort in knowing that my toddler is being cared for by the best. My body decides that this is a perfect opportunity for a curve ball and as I take my second or third relaxing breath, I begin a three hour panic attack.

Panic pro-star

Throughout the panic attack, the mini comes to visit my room and shushes me in an effort to ensure I don’t wake me up. Thank you, Love. I will be quiet. My heart is pounding out of my chest, I’m sweating, shaking and in full panic mode. Nothing is actually occurring around me to cause this. I am in a safe house, with care for my child and lying in my bed with a mattress warmer on. Flashback to my day of mindfulness.

Despite these comforts, I lose my shit for hours and can do nothing more than attempt to count my breaths. Luckily, I have spent a great deal of time breathing through panic attacks. Learning to let a panic attack ride out, like a tidal wave that you cannot stop, is a skill I would highly recommend. I used to give myself a double panic attack by panicking about the fact that I was panicking. After much practice and dedication, I’ve become a panic attack pro-star and am considering competitive panic attacking.

Evening fun begins

Three hours later, I emerge from my room feeling extremely tired and with a very sore chest. Lovely Lindsay has cooked the mini lots of food and I know that although my nap was not the most restorative experience, it was a gift to have space and time to go through it. I give my friend a hug and she heads out. It’s time for dinner and so I sit the mini in her highchair and give her an array of amazing food (clearly not cooked by me).

I leave her for a moment to go get laundry from my basement, come back upstairs and she says “all done”. Hmm…the food is gone. I look at the dog below the highchair. There is a streak of mashed black bean, quinoa and corn dribbled from her head to her tail with a few blobs and patches on the ground. She smells like wet dog mixed with beans. Awesome.

I use Lysol wipes to clean the dog. I remove the mini from her chair and put her in the bath. We go through our regular routine of Dotty the Potty attempts and after a roll of toilet paper is used for her single, tiny squirt of pee I take her to get her PJs on. All goes well and I read her The Going to Bed Book for the 468^th time. She fucking loves it. I’m a great mom.

Single mother means all the love

Nighttime fun

I put the mini in her crib, give her kisses and she tells me “no bed”. Well friend, you’re already in your bed. I attempt to put a blanket on her, which she is highly offended by, and then tell her I love her. She looks at me and says “where baby” in reference to her toy baby that she hauls around like a rag doll. I smile and say “your baby is sleeping”. As she proceeds to begin freaking out, I tell her I will go get the baby and that I’ll be right back. This immediately calms her down. I close the door with no intention of returning.

I spend some time cleaning the dinner mess and the dog. I’m weak and shaky from the panic attack and overwhelmed by the amount of laundry I have to fold. Deciding the laundry is far too great a task for Today Nadia, I keep the clean laundry basket beside my bed and plan to take one item out at a time (to wear) until there is no more clean laundry. I attempt to watch a movie, fall asleep during the opening credits and wake up on my couch at midnight. Hmm…time for bed. What a great movie that was.

Tucked

I am asleep for 37 seconds and I hear the mini crying. She’s not screaming or intensely upset, but crying. As I listen to evaluate what the cry means, I wonder if she’s remembered the baby. Damn baby…she has no idea what she’s setting herself up for. Eventually I get up to go check on her. As I walk in slowly like a covert spy that fixes problems in secret, she looks directly at me and indicates she wants me to tuck her in. She’s untucked.

The kid is wearing a sleep bag. There is literally no possible way to be untucked. Even if she wanted to untuck herself, she is zipped as fuck and cannot get out of the sleep bag. I have a vague memory arise in my mind of yelling for my own mom to tuck me in again and recall that I did, in fact, have blankets. This is clearly horseshit but I do it anyway. After ruffling her little bag around and giving her another kiss, she closes her eyes and goes back to sleep. Nailed it. Call me for your re-tucking needs, especially if you’re in a sleeping bag.

Middle of the night fun

As I go back to bed, I notice it’s about 2am. That’s positive, I think to myself. I did sleep a bit. I hear her little cries continue, on and off, for the next hour. Then there is a muffled noise, some struggling and a few bangs. Her crying becomes legitimate and I get up again to see what the deal is. This better not be another tucking issue. For tuck’s sake.

I check the time as I walk toward her room. It’s 4am. As I walk in, I notice the moonlight is bright and beautiful. I peek into her crib, notice a tiny, shiny ass and she says “bum!!“. The mini is buck naked, clothing and diaper off, and wearing a winter hat. Somehow she has removed all of her clothing, realized she was cold, found a hat to keep warm (this is a real mystery) and when that didn’t suffice, she used her phone a friend card.

YOYA

Her ass is shiny from all the pee in the bed so rather than clean the sheets at 4am, I get her new PJ’s and bring her to my room. She is wide awake. As I attempt to go back to sleep, baby on top of me and dog at my feet, she begins to sing. It gets louder. And louder. She is laying on my body and I’m hoping somehow my mom-like comfort will put her to sleep. Instead she spontaneously pushes up, slams her skull into my teeth, hits a downward dog on top of my body and yells “YOYA!!!”

Restorative sleep continues

My lip is actually bleeding, however, I don’t give a shit in that moment. I put her beside me and continue trying to calm her down. She tells me that she wants to eat my eyes. That’s fine. Then at least I will be in a nice, dark, sleep space due to my lack of eyeballs. We both eventually fall asleep. I’m not fully out, however, I drift into a relaxing state once I hear her little snores beside me.

Suddenly the dog decides to jump off of the bed because she’s itchy. Likely she is trying to scratch off quinoa or corn. The noise wakes the mini, she’s ready for Paw Patrol and I’m absolutely exasperated. Fine. FINE I’M AWAKE. She crawls back on to my body and I try unsuccessfully to cuddle her back to sleep. It is such a futile battle that I get up and immediately remember her pee-filled bed. Well, that’s probably deep in the mattress now. Perfect.

Morning fun begins

I grab my favourite sweatshirt out of the clean laundry basket as I prepare for the morning, which has somehow arrived although I am not sure how to differentiate yesterday from today. As I pull the sweatshirt over my head, my face is filled with dog piss. I immediately remove the shirt and smell the laundry basket. In a moment of jealousy or senility or both, the dog decided after waking the mini that she would piss in my clean laundry basket. Every single item smells like dog piss.

This is the second time in the week that I have been dog-pissed. A few days prior, I spent the entire day at work with it on my shirt and now my colleagues call me Pee-Pee Sleeve. So I am extra unhappy.

The dog is outside at that point (FOR A PEE) and I bring the sweatshirt out to the door. As she comes in, I yell “WHY DID YOU PEE ON MY CLOTHES?!” and lower the sweatshirt in front of her. She looks at it, looks at me and begins wagging her tail wildly. I am so infuriated that I don’t even know what to do with my life. The dog runs over to the treat cupboard, sits down and wags her tail. The mini sits on the couch and begins repeating “puppy puppy puppy”.

Impulsive choices

I think of many profanities that I would like to repeat at an equal or higher tone than her but I restrain myself. In a moment of defeat, I give the dog a treat, turn on Paw Patrol and head to my bathroom. I notice a pill on the ground and wonder what it is. Upon inspection, I decide it can only help. I down the random floor pill and return to coffee and chaos, hoping that the pill was a benzodiazepine. In all likelihood, it was an Ibuprofen.

Returning to the mini’s bedroom, I begin to change the piss sheets and mattress cover and prepare for another round of laundry. I am immediately double angry because I realize I have to rewash my clean laundry as well as this piss sheet. I recall my run from the day before and how great the difficulty of it felt. As soon as I put in a load of laundry, I go on Kijiji and impulsively purchase a treadmill. It is in my basement within a couple of hours.

The rest of the morning continues with much the same level of chaos. The mini wouldn’t nap. A bath was a big requirement because the dog still reeked of beans and corn. Her fur is bunched up in clumps of day old baby food. Cheerios cover my floor; Lego provides me with unwelcomed acupressure.

Relaxing shower

As noon on Sunday approaches, I manage to clean most of the house as well as the dog and get a few other chores done that I’ve been avoiding. I read my water meter, change the mini’s sheets and clean more clothes. Each dog piss infested article of clothing makes me feel even more infuriated. After many failed attempts at getting the mini to sleep, I decide to take a shower. I set her up with toys and books, lock the dog out of the bedroom and attempt hygiene.

After shaving one leg and only one leg, the mini is naked again and crawling in the shower. She log rolls herself in and I catch her with my feet. Welcome…thanks for coming in. I pick her up and begin rocking her.

Children’s music

Often I sing in the shower and so I begin singing some pop culture song to her. The mini starts singing as well. I’m intrigued by her cute little singing voice and begin trying to figure out what song she’s singing. ABC’s maybe; perhaps Twinkle Twinkle. After quite some time, I manage to figure out one word and realize she is not singing in English. She is not singing in any normal, spoken language actually.

Sanskrit fills the bathroom as she belts out the Ashtanga Yoga chant. I feel a mix of amusement, love and concern. I hope she also knows the ABC’s. Or any English song. Or any song in any spoken language. She continues “abahooo babashakarummmmmmm”. Beauty. I have visions of this happening at daycare. Whatever, I think to myself. At least she isn’t saying ‘fuck’ anymore. My attempts to convince them she was saying ‘puck’ hadn’t been going well.

24 hours of fun

This ends my 24 Hours of Fun; we are at noon on Sunday. Sunday funday. The rest of my day is spent doing chores as fast as I can and thinking about my new treadmill. I purchased it for twenty bucks and the lowest speed it goes is extremely fast. It’s like the fastest water slide at the park. It is approximately 75 years old, just like I feel, and I can’t wait to run on it in my fake Uggs. The mini is safe and happy. The dog is safe-ish (from me) and happy. I am safe and happy. Another day, another adventure.

YOYA!!