The best laid plans of mice and moms......

I know the quote is "of mice and men" and all that, but I took a little liberty.  I am usually very careful in my planning.  I am a planner.  I like to know what is coming up.  I write everything on the calender and it hangs on the refrigerator.  I like to know what my day is going to offer.  That is just me.  It helps when you have four kids in various activities.  That way, my work, their dad's work, school, functions, life, meetings, they can all be managed.  That is all we as moms really are, Family Managers.  We just don't get the six figure salary that we definitely earn every year.

So as I manage away, I have come to know that there are always monkey wrenches thrown into my loop.  Yesterday, I have my day planned.  Very simple.  I work from 10-2, did some fundraising on my ten minute break (still trying to get donations for our Silent Auction), and then on the way home, I was going to breeze into a couple of businesses to get donations.  Get home, make dinner, go to Tyler's game, leave a little early to take Grant to drum lessons, go back to Tyler's game, pick him up, feed him on the way to youth group, pick up Grant at drums, take him to his youth group, come home, feed Scott and then pick up Grant from youth group.  Simple, simple day.  Then came the phone call.....Tatum is sick in the school office.  Monkey wrench.  Because now, I cannot take all the kids to Grant's game and all the shuffling around.  She does not do well in the car when she has a headache.  She gets headaches from being dehydrated.  I know this because if she drinks water, takes a nap and then drinks some more water, her headaches go away.  Since she is not going to the game, I must rearrange my entire day.  

I took the call at work, but it was just fifteen minutes before I was getting off, so I did not have to call my mom-in-law to pick her up.  I pick her up (did not get to go to businesses to get donations), get her home and settled.  I cancel Grant's drum lessons (luckily his teacher is awesome and goes to our church and totally understands), realize that Grant is grounded and should not go to youth anyways (okay, I copped out on this one, but work with me), realize that Grant is old enough to watch the younger ones while I take Tyler to youth group and then come home to make dinner for Scott.  Okay, I heated up leftovers, but still I did make those the day before.

I always laugh at my friends who have been stay at home moms who have lost their confidence and say they could never go back to work.  Really?  I think we could run a third world country with unbelievable success.  We do it every day.  Our worlds are just smaller.  We constantly rearrange our plans, and can change directions and cope and do it all with quite a bit of success.  Plans change and stuff happens and we role with it.  Our management skills have no equal in corporate America.  We have five things on four burners at all times and we make it successfully work nine times out of ten, and we will make leftovers with the "ten".  

Celebrate my friends, we are the managers of our very full lives and we are mostly successful at it.  Definitely more successful than the banks and corporations that got our economy into this mess.  Now, if only we could get the government to bail us out with billions of dollars, or just write us a nice fat check, a couple of hundred thousand would suffice.

God bless you mangers of life and all you have to manage.