Dirty Dishes

Sunday night my sister and her family stopped at my house to stay overnight on their way to the Pacific Northwest for Christmas. Overnight turned into one fun filled day and two wild nights because of some weather concerns and the need to run an errand. I didn’t mind though. I really enjoy my sister and her rather large family. They do a wonderful job entertaining my children, and we do a wonderful job of being bad examples to them, so it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.

On Sunday night I overheard my brother-in-law say that he was going to take my nephew to Happy Valley for the aforementioned errand at 7 o’clock the next morning. For those of you who are blissfully ignorant of the geography in Utah, I will supply a quick lesson. I live in the Salt Lake Valley, home of Salt Lake City and most anything that is remotely cool about Utah (outside of Park City of course, which isn’t in the Salt Lake Valley, and totally rocks, but you have to be rich to go there. Sorry.) Directly south is what’s known as “Happy Valley”, home of Provo, and BYU, and almost everything that is uptight and Mormon about Utah. So as far as I understood my brother-in-law and nephew were going to Happy Valley bright and early in the morning and would be back whenever Brigham Young allowed them to return.

I woke up Monday morning and helped all the kiddies get some breakfast. They played inside for a while, and then the half inch of snow left on the ground became too hard for them to resist, and they wanted to go out and play. I helped them all get in snow clothes, and sent them outside and promised to make them hot chocolate when they came back in. I am so in the running for Mother-Of-The-Year! There was no sign of my sister, and I just figured she was sleeping in and loving it because it’s a luxury she doesn’t usually get. Taking care of her two little girls was a bit of extra work, but wasn’t bad, and anyway she would wake up and be upstairs any minute, right?

The phone rang just as I put the hot chocolate on the stove. When I answered and it was my sister on the other end I actually thought: What is she doing calling me from downstairs? And I’m seriously embarrassed to admit this people, but it wasn’t until half way through the conversation that I realized she wasn’t downstairs AT ALL. She had, in fact, gone to Happy Valley with her husband and son, and I was ALONE in my responsibility for ALL HER CHILDREN PLUS MY OWN.

It was unreal (and I mean UNREAL!) how quickly everything (and I mean EVERYTHING!) spiraled out of control once I made this realization. Badger ran inside and peed all over the bathroom floor. The hot chocolate boiled over on the stove while I was cleaning the pee. There was a snowball to the face injury, and an incident involving soggy dog poop on a snow boot tracked onto the kitchen floor. Then there was a near-starvation crisis, wherein five little children were going to die if they didn’t get lunch RIGHT NOW. That crisis was thankfully narrowly averted with crackers, cheese, turkey, and peanut butter. All this in the span of about 4 minutes.

I still don’t get what happened. How everything was so blissful when I thought my sister was downstairs, and how everything turned to shit when I found out she was not. I do know one thing though, I am most likely NOT in the running for Mother-Of-The-Year. Damn.