the no good, very bad, actually awesome day

aka the saturday the cat peed on everything

Let’s sit and talk about bad days. The kind of bad days where you sit and think Wow, this couldn’t get any worse...and then five minutes later and perhaps for the rest of the morning things do get worse…MUCH worse. In fact things get so “worse” that you start to scratch your head and think was it something I said? Is there suddenly an energetic target on my house? Seriously, how do I change the trajectory of nonsense that has come down upon us?

Mornings like this are hit and miss for me. If it’s a miss I will immediately overreact, raise my voice, and end up having to apologize to my children or the dog before lunch time. Inevitably putting myself in time out in the bathroom…not to actually use the bathroom but to lock the door and look up a few Mary Oliver poems, put my head in my hands, stare at myself in the mirror and give myself a pep talk - depending on the flavor of my undesirable reaction sometimes I will have to call my sister. And if I text her that I’m in the bathroom and I need to talk, She knows…she knows to pick up the phone and tell me that I’m a good mom and I’m gunna make it through the day. She’s a good egg.

The hits are fewer and farther between for sure! And bad days almost entirely only go well if I remember this one tricky concept in the midst of my oh my goodness I just can’t…pouty, victim, overwhelm, godzilla mom moments; it is as follows…that a good day is a good day buuut a bad day is a really really good day. 

You’re thinking what the heck right? And here’s why, it’s because bad days are when we get to actually work on ourselves. Work on our patience, our love, our letting go of our need to control, our judgements, our empathy, our….insert all the things that we would hope to embody as a more elevated human being. We need good days but the bad days are actually where we grow…where we get to stop and wonder Hmmm, what if I can ride this out gracefully, with some sort of badassery and come out the other side feeling like a damn super hero because I laughed instead of cried and learned something about myself? Hmmmm I wonder?

We have company coming today. My niece is driving all the way from Washington and we couldn’t be more excited to see her – also to hug her way more than any eighteen year old would ever actually condone. So, yesterday I sat down with my partner and we started to go over the to-dos. Looking to divvy up the tasks in a way that felt good. Just a typical list of things to tackle when you have company; food to shop for, tidying, cleaning the bathrooms, stripping the beds…the usual. Nothing crazy except for some reason — I think because I suddenly realized our Saturday would be mostly chores, we also have a work party this Sunday (where there will be a lot of people - my introvert heart is already palpitating), my partner has a big shoot next week (ahem, more solo-parenting for me) and I wanted “me time” to do some making of things (art please) — I felt like the walls were crashing in. Everything felt like it was squeezing the sit down chat started smoking and went off the rails really really fast. I was completely overwhelmed and felt like it was all very very serious; there wasn’t enough time, energy, or motivation. Nope, nothing was going to work out today and I instantly completely transformed into the grumpiest version of myself. I told my partner we would have to talk later after I returned to my more logical human self and decided to just go get started on something small…washing my face and brushing my teeth seemed good because a warm washcloth, a minty fresh mouth, and a good stare in the mirror usually gets me going on the right path. 

However, upon walking into the bathroom I instantly smelled cat pee. It’s unmistakable. It hangs in the air all oily and wild smelling and it instantly fills you with panic because you know it’ll be so darn difficult to get rid of that maybe you should just sell your house now and be done with it. I started sniffing around and found the source; a hand towel in the hamper that was wet and reeking. I called out to my family confused; did someone put the wet, cat pee, towel in the hamper? Or had the cat jumped in there and peed? No one could say really. My partner's nose is null and void. He admitted he had picked up the towel and had noticed it was wet on the floor but he wasn’t sure if it was from pee. How this is possible I do not know. But I took a deep breath and thought ok, not going to flip out I’ll just take care of it (again not always my reaction but it was a good bad day).

I head out to the garage to throw the hand towel away – because I never want to use it on my face again. And, I hear my oldest kiddo yelling Moooommmmm, Vera is peeing on Lorelei’s bed!! And I think to myself what the actual heck? I stay calm by some not so small miracle. I gather up the blanket, get the “urine destroyer” spray, and take everything into the laundry room wondering if I should put the cat in the bathroom? Is she sick or angry or both? And as I’m contemplating how to catch her and where to put her I hear my partner saying… OH MY GOD babe she’s peeing on YOUR blanket now!! And NOW I just smile because yup, this is the good kind of bad day. And I haven’t flipped out once. Somehow i’m practicing patience and grace and humor. I have no idea how only that it’s happening, i’m no longer overwhelmed by my stupid list of todos, and I’m riding the high that comes from having a sense of humor in the face of a house smelling like cat pee. And I think, well that was interesting! I guess bad things do come in threes.

Well, apparently they come in fours. I head back into my bedroom, where I left my three year old rolling around in a pile of clean laundry, and I see her standing in the doorway with a strange look on her face. Mommy, she says, I peed on your bed…I’m sorry. I tried to make it but I didn’t. She peed right up on the blanket I had piled away from the previous blanket which the cat had peed on. So now three blankets are done for, the laundry room is full and reeking, and I am no where close to having the house tidied up for company. And I just shook my head, smiled and said accidents happen babe. 

It was a hit of a day even when the hits kept coming. Accidents happen, sometimes the cat gets a UTI, sometimes bad things come in fours or twelves…and sometimes things get worse in order to get better and you have to just laugh, leave the todos and go bowling. Which is exactly what we did. We put that cat in the bathroom with all her necessaries and I went and bowled 9 rounds of gutter balls like the amazingly awful bowler that I am. It was a good day.