Saved by a Nickel

I love to sleep in.

However, I am a mother.

The two don't go hand in hand.

David has always been great at getting up with the kids on Saturdays and letting me snooze a little longer. However, my peaceful Saturday mornings were soon filled with screams, shrieks, and peals of laughter finding their way up the stairs into my bedroom. I still tried to fake sleep just to sneak in a few more moments to myself before the whirlwind weekend began.

As it became increasingly difficult for David to keep these energetic little hyenas quiet in the morning, he started shoving them all in the van, in their pjs, and going out to get breakfast and bringing it back. Sweet. But weird, because as crazy as it is around here with everyone screaming at once, I feel strange in an empty house.

And I discovered that I can't sleep in an empty house. How ironic. So instead of laying there soaking in the sound of nothing, as soon as I hear the whir of the garage door signaling that they have left the building, I leap from the covers and start cleaning the house. Depending on where they go get food, I have anywhere from about 20-40 minutes of free time to just do nothing but C-L-E-A-N! It's great.

I've become fairly good at multitasking on my days at home. Fix the kids lunch, throw in a load of laundry while they eat, vacuum the living room while they run around squealing pretending it's a lion ready to eat them, empty the dishwasher without clanking the dishes together too loud to wake anyone up from a nap.

But it is just a down right satisfying feeling to clean the house while everyone's O-U-T! I can go warp speed without having to stop in the middle of what I'm doing to get someone a glass of milk, change a diaper, kiss a nonexistant boo boo, etc. Half the time, I forget what chore I was working on so I just start a new one. Lo and behold, the next day I'll find a sopping wet load of clothes in the dryer because I had forgotten to start it.

I love being able to walk through every room in the house and have them all be clean simultaneously. If I'm cleaning while the kids are there, in the time it takes to scrub one toilet, a silent train has gone right through the middle of my living room and turned it upside down again.

That's life with kids, I realize. Nevertheless, our little Saturday morning practice of David leaving with the kids, and me speed cleaning, has become routine. So much so, that I actually kick them out for longer periods of time on Saturdays if the house is really a mess.

This weekend, however, I chose Friday night to kick them out for a bit. I quickly got to work picking up, washing dishes, wiping down mirrors, etc. I mean, I don't stop for nothin' during these escapades. The house could literally be falling down around me and I would be oblivious.

I grabbed the vacuum and after doing our two sets of stairs and the living room, I started flying down the hallway with it, towards all our bedrooms.

Then I saw it.

A shiny silver nickel nestled in the fibers of the carpet.

I weighed my choices.

I could just go right over the top of it. Or I could stop and pick it up, which would cost me precious seconds of cleaning. I decided to stop and pick it up for two reasons: #1. I didn't want to risk clogging the vacuum, which would actually waste more time by me trying to unclog it before David returned. #2. I had a flashback of the night before when I took off Drue's bathing suit in the hall and over $1 worth of change fell out (don't ask). So I figured there'd be more coins than just that nickel lying about.

As I got down on my hands and knees to pick up the nickel and search for the other coins, there, right next to that shiny silver nickel who had beckoned me was......my engagement ring!

I hadn't even known it was missing! I had taken off my rings earlier to put lotion on and left them in our bathroom. I confiscated my wedding band from Drue but hadn't even noticed that she had also taken my engagement ring! And I probably wouldn't have even realized it was missing until the contents of the vacuum had already been dumped into our huge trash barrel in the garage. The same trash barrel that becomes home to all the dirty diapers!!

So thank you, little Mr. Jefferson, for catching the light at just the right moment to make me stop and pick you up, lest you be sucked up into my vacuum along with the expensive token of David's love for me.