A Plan B for Plan A

I actually wrote this July of 2008 when my son was 4 and my daughter was just 3...

It was a very hard day; a meeting at 9am with what felt like 450 kids and four mothers (which, in actuality, was probably 30 kids and 15 moms), an oil change, a car wash, lunch, naps, then a slathering of sun block on bathing suit-clad toddlers in preparation for an afternoon of wading pool and sandbox frolicking only to have said frolicking last exactly nine minutes at which time a dreaded carpenter bee was spotted. How the poor devil wasn’t immediately struck with a heart-attack from the blood-curdling screams from my children is truly beyond me.

There was NO WAY either of my kids were going back out in the wild jungle otherwise known as the backyard. Inside we marched; stripping everyone out of bathing suits, brushing sand out of crevices sand should never be, then sitting down for a mid-afternoon snack to fuel up for the sniping and sibling rivalry inevitably taking place in the not-too-distant future. Not to mention the battles that will ensue over inane objects desired only because he/she has it.

I know what you’re thinking. “Here’s another stay-at-home mother crabbing about her kids.” I’m not though. I’m crabbing about my inability to have contingency plans in place! I’ve been a mom now for over four years. I should know my best-laid plans will be thwarted by one stinkin’ carpenter bee or his distant cousin the dreaded housefly and that the big plan for a wonderful family afternoon would turn into my kids playing in the playroom and me cleaning up the house. Very sad.
I should have had a Plan B for my Plan A. Assuming some sort of trauma would take place, instead of giving up and parading everyone indoors, I could have announced we were going on a bike ride, or a walk around the neighborhood. I think if I had had that plan in place, I wouldn’t have taken the easy way out.

I tend to do that at times; kind of like when you plan on going to the grocery store and just as you’re about to walk out the door, it starts raining. “Ah, I don’t need to go that badly; I’ll have my husband pick up a few things on his way home tonight.” Did you really want to go grocery shopping with the kids in tow anyway? Nah. Thanks to the rain you can get caught up on things around the house (or even read a few pages of your book, heaven forbid) and put off shopping for another day.
Did I really want to sit in my incredibly sunny backyard baking like an Idaho potato in a 400 degree oven whilst Leo and Cat stayed cool in 20 inches of liquid heaven? Of course not, but if I had a contingency plan, guilt would have won out over laziness, I would have made us go for a bike ride (not that my kids need much arm twisting to go bike riding), and I would have had that quality time with my growing-up-way-too-fast kids and gotten some exercise to boot instead of cleaning a kitchen that would get dirty again almost immediately while my kids watched Ruby and Max.
So here’s my mission: I’m going to always make a Plan B for my Plan A. I think if I do this often enough, and give it a good effort, my Plan B’s may become so good that Plan A may become Plan B and B become A!

Eileen Cassidy Bishop