A Day in the Life of a Mother

I am certainly gaining a greater appreciation for mothers! It's pretty tough to be busy and working all day, then have to take care of kids, plants, and animals in the evening. I've gotten too used to my quiet evenings here by myself after work! Things are going well with taking care of Bailey and Abby, but yesterday was just a really long day, and I woke up with a bit of a headache this morning. First of all, work was crazy yesterday--nine tours (eight is usually our maximum) went out!! We had a group who was scheduled for 3:00 p.m. show up at 3:20. So, Sharon had already started the regular 3:00 tour, and because we can only have 20 people in the house at a time, we had to wait a few minutes before I could take the big group in. Their advisor was kind of a grumpy man, and he was mad that it was taking so long to get started, but I was feeling grumpy too, and was mad that they were late. So between the two of us, it wasn't the happiest tour in the world, but everyone survived. Then I went over to the Wesselman's house (it's about 15 miles outside of Natchez), and Bailey, Abby, and I went to dinner. Then we took Abby to Young Women's and had to pick her up later, then we had to have bubble baths, read, do laundry, water the garden, and . . . clean up after the dogs. When I took care of the Wesselman's animals, their big dog Gracie was staying with someone else, so I just had their little dog Cocoa plus the cats, fish, and turtles. But now Gracie is there at the house, so there's quite a crowd. It was seeming like it was going to be a pretty quiet evening, but then I went into the kitchen and there was this pile of foamy stuff on the floor. Cocoa was standing by looking very guilty. I thought, "Oh great--this is not what we needed tonight!" It appears that Cocoa must have eaten something when he was outside that caused him to throw up. It was totally disgusting, but I got it off the floor and sprayed everything really well with Clorox cleaner. Then, at about 4:00 this morning, I was awakened by Milo, one of the cats, who started licking my face. He started out the night in Bailey's room with a closed door, but somehow made it down to the room where I was sleeping--where the door was also closed. Milo seems to have the ability to open doors. He slept by me for the rest of the night. Well, I'm heading back to the Johnson house for the afternoon, and then it's spaghetti and bowling tonight with the kids. The fun never ends!