Fun With Play-Dough

I hate Wednesdays. My daughter Isabella gets out of school at 3:30 pm, and has to be delivered to her ballet class by 4:15. It’s in the same building, because her school is located at the local Jewish Community Center, so there’s that; however, there is no time to go home in the meantime, nor is there enough time to go home during her class. The result: I wake my son Mendel at 3, he protests vehemently, and I struggle to put him in his coat, hat, socks, and boots. By 3:20, we are on our way, we pick up my daughter, and we spend half an hour in the cafeteria trying to convince her to do her homework while waiting for her class to start.

Mendel tries to hide behind the vending machine; Isabella is busy with everything but homework, and complains about her snacks. They’re not good enough. Then, when it’s time to change, she puts her drink in her backpack without closing the lid. We now have a dripping backpack, soaked homework, and a little boy who is getting crankier by the minute. My daughter changes into her ballet suit while I try to wipe Gatorade off the bathroom floor; she tells me I need to “hurry up, you’re making us late.”

Excuse me? We have a little talk, and she concedes that it may, possibly, perhaps, be her fault for dumping the lemonade; still, she’s not entirely convinced and gives me one last nasty look.

Finally, it’s 4:15 and she can go dance. I take my son to the library, where he wants to read Where the Wild Things Are. They have a Hebrew copy, which I can’t read; however, I know the story by heart and simply read it from memory while he looks at the pictures. Unfortunately, it’s out; he looks on all the shelves before he accepts that it’s simply not there. To avoid meltdown, I tell him he can pick a DVD. The library has a player, and it might keep him from climbing the shelves.  He picks the most annoying one, and for the next half hour I am subjected to the Israeli version of the Hokey-Pokey.

By 5, I tell him to shut it off; we need to go get Isabella. When we get to the hallway where ballet class is located, the backpack has dripped a nasty puddle; shit, there was still Gatorade inside. We collect: backpack, ballet bag, my own purse, my daughter’s coat, shoes; I run to the bathroom to grab more towels and wipe the nastiness off the floor. Thank god it’s tile and not carpet, like in the rest of the building.

With Mendel under one arm, two bags and my daughter hanging on the other arm, we navigate the parking lot. When we get home, it’s 5:35, and we realize all the homework is lost; it’s dripping and has to be laid out to dry. The backpack goes in the washer, after I pluck out all the little bits and pieces that make their home in the bottom of a girl’s bag.

My son decides to take a mouth full of milk and spit it out in the fireplace, which, of course, is on; a smell of burning milk starts to spread through the room. I shut it off and try to clean it. It’s no use, it’ll just have to burn off, so I turn it back on after cleaning the screen as well as I can. I stick him in the bathtub while my daughter does homework on the computer; extra long, since she can’t do her written work. When he’s done, she needs her bath. I used to bathe them together, but I can’t do that anymore; they’ll kill each other and splash water all over the floor until it drips through the kitchen ceiling. While she’s in the bath, I try to put away five loads of laundry; Mendel runs downstairs and is very quiet. “What are you doing?” I yell down the stairs, and after repeating my question three more times, he finally answers: “Eating.”

Oh. I guess he’s hungry; he didn’t finish his dinner, after all. When I come downstairs he has opened three different yoghurts and eaten half of each. Then he asks for juice; while I pour him a cup he gets impatient, tries to grab it and the apple juice splashes all over the kitchen floor. By now I’m so exasperated, I can’t even get mad; still, he starts to cry. My son is very good at that, two big tears make their way down his chubby cheeks, “I’m sorry, mama,” he whispers.  It breaks your heart. I tell him it’s okay, and Isabella, who is by now out of the bath and dressed in her jammies, offers to clean the floor. While I explain to Mendel that no, he is NOT getting another bath, Isabella gets out the Swiffer stick and starts mopping. She does a terrible job, and the floor remains sticky in all the wrong places. Still, she made an effort, and I decide not to insult her by cleaning it again.

By now it is past 8:30, and really, finally, time for Isabella to go to bed. We go upstairs and read stories; my husband gets home from work and takes over. I take Mendel back downstairs; he won’t sleep this early and I am too exhausted to fight him. He takes out more yoghurt, leaves the fridge wide open, and climbs on the counter. I deflate in front of CNN and am grateful that AC 360 repeats itself, so I can catch at least half of the evening’s news. I wonder for the 1000^th time: how do single mothers keep their sanity?