Perhaps you've seen little kids running around in circles and cackling like mad scientists, seeming limitless reserves of energy. And if there are other adults around, you sit there and watch the children together, smiling, and remarking that you don't know where kids get their energy and you only wish you had the same.

It is the standard response, it seems, to any sort of display like this. Usually I'm just happy that I'm not the one having to run around with them--that there are other children. But the truth is, kids don't have the corner on the energy market. When you are rushing around in the morning, trying to get your child to school and you have to make breakfast and get dressed and make sure your kid going to school is dressed with her homework and whatever outerwear she needs. And maybe you want your younger kid dressed too, although really, she can just ride naked for the short ride. Anyway, when you are doing all that, and your child is poking along, barely moving, she's conserving energy. When she doesn't have socks and you tell her to run upstairs to find a pair and you can tell by the rate at which she is moving you will be lucky if she gets the sock before the next phase of the moon, you're probably the one who dashes up the stairs to find the socks for her.

By the time she is finally at the school, you are practically breathless with all the running around you have done. So you come home to finish up the breakfast you never got to eat, and you start in on the dishes. Where is the wild running three year old? Well, just playing quietly or watching tv, or eating or making more messes. Meanwhile you barely have a chance to sit and eat before it's time to get up again. You are dashing up the stairs yet again to find clothes for your 3 year old because you are going to drive back to the school to show support for the older girl who is participating in the jog-a-thon.

You run too, of course, as a kind of moral support. You can't run very fast, but you jog your 270 lb body around the course and stop and walk when your child stops and walks. You can insert whatever weight you want there--I'm sure no one reading this weighs as much as I do. And for that matter, did their child have a jog-a-thon today? No. But this is all sort of, well, symbolic or just representative of all the different ways in which we as mothers expend so much energy. OK, back to that, your 3 year old declares she is tired and lies down in the grass, effectively becoming a bump in the road for the other runners. So you show her to a safe resting place and try and then break into a jog again, trying to catch your 7 year old. A little while later you heave the 3 year old up on your shoulders and run as much as you can before her 40 lb weight becomes too much, and you have to swing her down to the ground while she is exhorting you, "run! run faster!" The teacher smiles and compliments you for your energy, which is nice for once, but you wonder if she secretly is worried you are going to fall down or have a coronary or something.

So who is it, last to bed because finally both kids are asleep and you can have some quiet time to yourself? And then maybe you are up several times because of kids, or maybe not. But even if not, the little one is in your bed when you get there, and you have to eke out a small bit of territory for yourself, and then you have to get even more energy sucked out of you when your child starts nursing and doesn't want to stop. But she is up an hour before the alarm goes off, making sure to get some good breastfeeding in first. Fueling herself for the day ahead where, after the jog-a-thon at the older girl's school, she can proclaim she is tired of walking and have you carry her back to the car. Then she can come home and fall dead asleep on the couch while you are fixing lunch and still trying to get the dishes done.

Later on, when you are digging through big black bags of garbage in the dumpster at the school, looking for the older girl's retainer, your kids are the one sitting peacefully in the car, watching a dvd. By the way, you probably wouldn't be amazed to see how much food is wasted and just how much waste the school generates on a daily basis. The lunch lady told you there were 12 bags of lunch trash, but after digging through cardboard and styrofoam that are covered with vacuum cleaner dust to find bags covered with the same dust, and heaving the bags out of the dumpster, and digging through 7 bags of ranch dressing and milk covered half eaten lunch remains, you figure it's a loss and time to go take a shower.

And when you sit and try to type about it, the older girl comes crying to you, because the younger girl has thrown her favorite littlest petshop in the gerbil cage, and the gerbil has gnawed off the ears and tails. The perpetrator of the crime is angry because people are finding fault with her, and starts throwing stuff. And the victim of the heinous act is demanding that you have taken enough time in the bathroom, come out and dig through the gerbil litter to find the ears and the tail, for goodness sake!

Later on you will go and force yourself on the treadmill, even if you are tired and not in the mood, because you know it is good for you and grown ups have to do such things. If the kids get tired and don't want to walk, they won't walk. Believe me, you know. You've threatened them with abandonment after they conned you into thinking that yes, in fact, they could walk half a mile with no problem and that you would be denying them cruelly if you didn't take them on this walk right away. And then always, halfway into it, they faint dead away from exhaustion, unable to walk even one more step. Where is that energy that we envy then? Oh, it's in us, carrying all 40 lbs of them, even up a hill, even when we are 9 months pregnant. We figure it is good for us, if we are being positive. Otherwise we play the odds, considering how it will look to leave kids about a quarter of a mile down the road while we go and get the car--will someone driving by frown and shake their heads at us while calling CPS? You aren't sure. You only know it's like wearing clean underwear in case you are in a car accident. Or wearing clothes to drive your daughter to school. Chances are it won't matter that you are in your nightshirt, but there is that one in a thousand chance that you will have to walk around so clad on school property, so you go get dressed. Anyway, this idea that kids have all the energy is for the birds. So the next time you see your children running around in circles and wonder where they get it from, remember it comes from you. Give yourself a pat on the back and take a much deserved rest.

Typical annoying morning, the tenor of my life. Some days lately we have gotten to school at least a good 5-10 minutes early, but today was not going to be one of those days. I was going to need every minute of time. I have to watch myself as I am easily distracted even in a hurry, but I have 40 years of being rushed along, so I respond to being late by hurrying. My kids don't. I am tired of pushing and fussing and yelling about it, so I tried just letting Bug set her own pace and deal with the consequences. That did not go over well.

So I've taken to setting the stove buzzer for certain key points. OK, the one coming up means it's time to put on your shoes. The one after that will mean it's time to walk out the door. The first buzzer goes off when Bug has barely been able to eat, so preoccupied she is with her new retainer and quad helix that she can't get much down. Which makes me wonder, you know, why my parents didn't get me orthodontia once they were concerned about my growing girth as a child. Would I be as fat as I am now if I had had braces as a teen? But she gets up and asks me to get her socks. She puts them on and her shoes, but I have to tie them for her.

The buzzer goes off to walk out the door. I am just finishing up on the tying of the shoes. I tell her to get her backpack, and she said it is still in my car. Oh no way, it's not still in my car!! I brought it in the house so she could clean it out; throw away that disposable lunch I gave her on Friday because they had a field trip and her teacher wanted everything to be disposable. On that day I had had to hunt up a brown paper bag of the right size, and find a plastic spoon and give her the ice pack that came in a food package mailed from some chocolate berry company. A thank you gift to my husband for his new car purchase. The ice pack was reusable, but also disposable and was completely misshapen from melting and refreezing. So not only did she not throw any of the stuff away, she brought almost the entire contents of her lunch back, and I could smell the decaying fruit in my car on Saturday. I brought the backpack into the house, then, instructing her to clean it out. Of course that didn't get done. She claimed she never heard me.

As an aside, on Saturday Bug had a friend visiting, and they went into my little retreat space and dumped a 1000 piece Lego set out to play with. Then they kept bugging to go to the bookstore I had said I would take them. As we were ready to walk out the door, I noticed that the Legos were still all over the floor. I kind of blew up about that, asking her what she was thinking. I mean, seriously, it's gotten to the point that when the kids take just about any toy out, either my DH or I will say in that ominous tone, "You know you have to pick that up, don't you?" Apparently, though, even with this dire warning, Bug still had no clue she would have to pick up all those Legos because, "you never told me to clean them up." Insert head banging against a brick wall smilie here.

Back to this morning: Bug had her shoes on, but was trying to finish up some breakfast, cleaning out whatever gunk she had in her mouth that was caught in her quad helix. I took out her old lunch and put her new one in. I was going to go get in the car, but as I went and slipped my feet into my clogs, I saw Bug and Bean still sitting there finishing up. So I folded a few pieces of laundry that were on a chair waiting for them, and then realized that no, I shouldn't be doing that now. I told Bean she could stay home since her Dad was still here, but she should probably come with us. She did. We got in the car and I buckled Bean into her seat and then Bug remembered her retainer (the one she is only to supposed to take out to brush it) was on the kitchen table. I ran in and retrieved it. At this point we had cut away any fat from our driving to school time, and there was literally only the time it would take to drive there and walk to the classroom.

I got in the car again, buckled up, put the key in the ignition, turned it and nothing. Nothing. The night before Bean had turned on the light by her door and I told her to turn it off and she said, No! I was parking in the garage at this point, and in an ill-fated moment, I decided not to turn the light off by the switch up front, but to get out and just make sure her light was out. Because, dammit all, I have to keep that switch turned off all the time and end up alone in the dark after choir rehearsal with no interior lights because I'm not allowed to have interior lights in my car because I have kids. Screw that, she was turning her light off. Even as she was saying no, I heard her click the light. But because I parked and opened the door, I guess she hit the switch several times. So now the battery is dead.

When I realized it, I jumped out of the car proclaiming we would take Daddy's car. He was staying home sick today because of nausea, so his car was available. Normally that wouldn't be the case. I ran in the house, got his keys and jumped in his car. My children were still sitting there, placidly buckled into their various seats and looking out at me. I turned away and got in his car and figured I'd get the seat adjusted and back it out of the garage. The engine started, spurring them to action and they stood there inside my minivan, crying because they couldn't get out the door. I have no idea why not. Maybe because of the dead battery. I opened the minivan door with my key fob and they ran and got in the car. I hadn't gotten it out of the garage, and now the fumes, even with the garage door open, were overwhelming. I turned the ignition off in order to buckle Bean into the booster seat in the back. Then I couldn't get the car to start again. He has a keyless ignition, but the problem was I hadn't put it back in park. Then I couldn't get my seatbelt buckled, couldn't find the emergency brake release, couldn't figure out how to put my seat back forward. Bug helped me with that one.

We were driving down the street and at this point it is 9 o'clock. I figured I'd tell the woman in the attendance office that we had a burned out battery and had a delay in getting a new car. When I pulled up to the front of the school, there was still a little busy traffic with last minute drop-offs. I saw a space on the street open up as I was driving, but the cars were busy turning out of the parking lot. The speed limit in school zones is 15 mph here, so people will pull right out of the parking lot in front of oncoming traffic, as if they had the right of way. A white minivan pulled out right in front of me, and then damn if the bitch didn't take the spot right in front of the school that I was heading for. So not only did she deny me my right of way, but she was coming out of the damn school parking lot to take my space. Then, to add insult to injury, she left a huge space right in front of her car and the car she was behind, so I had to park completely in the red zone, practically in the crosswalk. I got out of the car cursing.

I walked Bug into the school leaving Bean in the car. I wasn't going to take the diaperless wonder out just to walk Bug the 20 feet into the front door to tell the nurse we had car troubles. The clock in the school said 9 exactly, but I figured the bell had already rung. I went into the nurse's office to get the late slip and got a disapproving look from the woman working there. Normally I don't even walk Bug into get the late slip, figuring that is her consequence from which to learn, but today we had a valid reason. Dead battery. Alas, the woman did not ask us why we were late. I volunteered that our car wouldn't start, but it didn't even slow the movement of her pen across the form or change the look on her face from one of smug disapproval to empathy. We've been late enough times that she thinks we should leave extra early to account for any problems. She told Bug that, actually, after we got screwed by a detour that doubled the distance we had to travel one day.

Well, you know, fuck that shit! Seriously. Fuck those smug ass be early everywhere people. As a chronic late person, the thing that sends me into a panic attack faster than anything is to invite someone to dinner at a specific time and have them show up early. But do they care about that? No, they actually think being early is virtuous. Not that I would mind Bug being early to school--no, not at all. She is allowed to be up to 20 minutes early. But I am seriously not going to stand and dictate every movement of my kid who will be 8 in May. I did that for awhile, saying, "Hurry, hurry, we're late, MOVE!" in that excited tone that would be enough to drive most people into a frenzy. When my mom did that, we jumped into action. Bug just doesn't get it. The buzzer will be going off, meaning we have to go get in the car, and she will sit down and decide she needs to change her pants.

So many times I've been tempted to jump in the car with her backpack, run in the classroom and drop it off triumphantly saying, "Look, I made it on time, I made it on time! Where is Bug, you ask? Oh, she's still at home. I wouldn't have made it on time if I had to wait for her." (actually, I did run her backpack into class ahead of her in the first grade. her backpack made it on time, but she didn't. she refuses to run, even when late). I am 40 years old and I am capable of being on time now. I have finally learned how. It was such a big thing for me in my 20s when I suffered from actual depression and self-loathing due to being late. I felt like I could never be on time anywhere and it was a fatal character flaw. Now I can be punctual! I am triumphant over tardiness! Woo Hoo! Oh wait, now I have to do it with kids. Well, fuckaduck, I'm right back to square one.

I guess I'll be on time when I'm 60.

So there are many things I could blog about, but I specifically came here to write this down. Bean was lying on the floor just now, and it was a rare moment of silence as Bug is sleeping on the couch and DH went to bed. So she said, "Mom, how do we come to life? How do we die?" I told her we die in many ways. I didn't get to answer her coming to life question, as she decided she wanted to watch Baby Einstein.

Of course my last post was about her and death, but I had completely forgotten that.