Late for School Library Duty

She, as infuriatingly usual, thought she could bend time to her will. And, surprise! She is late. She is also in need of a shower, wearing wrinkled clothes, and badly in need of makeup. Lots of makeup.

So this is how she does it: she wets her hairbrush and brushes her hair, then blows it dry to give it some sort of shape. Not successfully, but the lumpy mashed potato look will have to do. As luck would have it, good or bad luck to be determined later, she is already wearing her favorite shirt. It is, as mentioned earlier, wrinkled, but also endowed with her personal aroma. Let's call it Old Onion.

She strips it off and chucks it into the dryer with a moist washcloth and a dryer sheet for ten minutes. While those items are flopping around, she applies mascara and foundation. The foundation, because she has used way too much in her haste, leaves her looking sickly. To counteract appearance of being at death's door she smears on blush with the skill of a mortician. Brown eyeshadow sort of balances the severity of her face, but not really.

Okay, shoes. Shoes, shoes shoes. Where the @#$%! are her shoes? Here's one. At all costs she must wear something that covers her chipped toenails. The time is getting dangerously close to no show status, so she opts for low heals that look ridiculous with her jeans and, whipping it out of the dryer, her slightly damp and still wrinkled shirt. At least she smells "Mountain Fresh" now.

Clacking to the car in her heels, keys in hand, purse open and close to disgorging her cell phone and wallet, she stumbles into the front seat and screeches out of her driveway.

Most mothers in her neighborhood walk to school when they volunteer. Saunter, really. Wearing designer sunglasses, with their perfectly organized purses slung over their shoulder. They wave their manicured hands at other mothers who drive by with a trunk load of fresh vegetables (no frozen meals for their kids!).

At least that's how she pictures it in her mind as she parks with the skills of a ninja in an illegal spot. Her friends and neighbors could be just as harried as she is. Perhaps they just hide it better. Perhaps not. Two things are clear, however. One is that she needs these women to be perfect so that she has something to strive for. She doesn't resent these women, she admires them. How do they do it? She wonders.

And that, dear reader, is how this blog got started. And it is also the second thing that she finds clear: She may never know how these seemingly perfect mothers do it, but she knows they do not ignore the clock in order to finish reading the last chapter of a mystery novel.

No, that, almost consistently and with very little remorse, is how She Does It.