Oh look! The oppressive fog of Mom Guilt! (No? Just me?)
I saw the text as I was exiting Jr’s room with my usual grace after a particularly quick bedtime. (In other words, I fell over the laundry basket and landed in a pile of library books, stubbing my toe on his dresser and holding my breath as I glared over to see if I’d woken him. Nope. Stuck that landing.)
“I know you may be in Jammies, but you wanna meet me at the brewery for a beer at 8?”
Two things….
1. It was like, 7 pm on a Saturday night.
2. I was TOTALLY in jammies.
An internal battle began. The Mr had just brought home a new load of wine that was calling my jammie-clad name, along with my comfy chair and puffy dog.
BUT.
Nobody wants to be the lamest mom on the block, right? Jr had fallen blissfully asleep super quick, The Mr had some hideous Bob Marley concert on the DVR he was dying to watch; in short, the stars were aligning to send me off into the night.
I would bet 20 bucks that my friend swore audibly from the shock of seeing my “sure I can do that” return text.
Mama was breaking out.
With almost no notice. On a Saturday night. WAY past the usual happy hour time for typical outings.
I took one last look at my snoozing offspring on the monitor and told The Mr adios. Then I backed out of the driveway, cranking up the Banner Pilot as I stole away from the subdivision like thief stealing freedom.
If I was going to do this, I was going to go all in. What did teenage Keri do when she was out and about in this town on a Saturday night?
Oh Hayyyyy, Taco Bell drive thru. Bell Grande me, por favor!
Except I sat in that damn drive thru for 20+ minutes. My pumped-up-edness totally deflated by the time I finally rolled up to the window, where the uber uninterested girl took my money and then didn’t come back FOREVER. When she finally stuck my order out the window, I was like “what’s going on in there!?” She looked at me like I was crazy. Every substance on those nachos comes out of a freaking caulking gun – how could it take 20 minutes!!!
Was the universe conspiring against me due to my horrible decision? Was it just me, or was Taco Bell girl giving me a “why aren’t you home with your small child!?” look?
I pressed on – I had REALLY hard-earned nachos to share, and there was beer to be had.
We laughed, we drank, we ate nacho-type-product. All was well. I only semi-obsessively checked my phone/imagined my son waking up and being devastated beyond what therapy could heal when he found his ever-lovin’ mommy had abandoned him. (There is a small chance I might be inflating his image of me in my mind. Nahhh.)
After a couple hours of girl-timey goodness, I departed to head home in time to give Jr his booster of cough meds, LONG before the hour that Cinderella’s accessories were in any danger of becoming fodder for the farmers’ market. But hey – baby steps, yo.
A layer of super dense, weirdly stilling fog had settled over the town. Like, “can’t see the stop light until you are almost running it” fog. “Thick like potato soup, but not my grandma’s gross watery potato soup, REAL potato soup” fog. “Serial killers come out of this shit, don’t stop by that clump of trees, stupid” fog.
Like SERIOUS fog.
Again – my mind wandered to thoughts of universal signs, and images of Jr reading a fairy tale of a mother who left her son for selfish reasons and was swallowed up by a fog in the woods, NEVER to be seen again… except it wasn’t a fairy tale, it was YOUR CRUMMY MOM, JR!!
I hunched into granny-over-steering-wheel posture and soldiered on – MAMA’S YO’ RIDE OR DIE SON, even in the fog – I am coming!!! I am like the U.S. MFing P.S. – no weather can keep me from my appointed rounds!!!! (My parents always said I was “over dramatic” when I was young… I clearly grew out of that just fine.)
I punched the button on the garage door and did a total runner into the house, convinced that was the smoke/CO alarm I heard going off, or SOMETHING.
Nope.
There was The Mr. sipping on some Jeffersons, monitor humming an image of Jr peacefully off in dreamland, possibly having not even moved since I pulled my laundry basket dismount from his room hours ago.
Hm.
As my Aunt Della would say – guess I’m not so mucking futch around here after all.
But that Taco Bell wait was still totally messed up, yo.
Reluctantly Suburban 