This morning I cooked using a bowl I picked up off the floor.
No, you did NOT mis-read that.
I needed a bowl to whisk eggs in, and I looked down, saw a bowl, picked it up and- without any other sanitizing steps in between- cracked 2 eggs into it and whisked them for scrambled eggs. I wish I could say this horrified me. I wish I could say it was an aberration. I could explain that I had just emptied the dishwasher and the bowl in question had been put into a lower cabinet not thirty minutes earlier and then promptly removed by the intrepid Eli. I could justify it by saying that because Eli is King of the floor eaters, I tend to mop, swiffer and sweep in a never ending cycle throughout the day. Or I could outright LIE and say I dropped it only moments prior and thereby invoked the 5-second rule. But that's all they would be- wishes, explanations, justifications, and lies. The truth is, I'm just tired. And tired has led to some very interesting explanations, justifications and lies. Mostly to myself. These all take place as very brief (as Man calls them) mind movies, where in the blink of an eye, I play out ALL the possible outcomes of my minor(and occaisonally major!) slide into slovenliness.
And then I just let it go. I am finding that a great deal of my parenting style is about not sweating ANY of the stuff. Well, nothing that doesn't endanger life. It goes something like this- I look around, see if anyone is bleeding or foaming from the mouth or asphyxiated, and if not, I pat myself on the back and say "GREAT JOB MOMMY!" Because I'm thinking if they make it to angst-ridden, mother-loathing adulthood, I did my job. When they tell me about the years of therapy I caused- same thing. Gonna just congratulate myself AGAIN. Probably OUT LOUD. At which point, they might be confused as to WHY mom is talking to herself, but I'll know and apparently, I'm the only person keeping score.
