If you give a mom a minute, she’ll use it to check on the laundry, “just real quick.”
As she checks the laundry, including the pockets, she will find 3 candy wrappers, a nickel, a pen, and a Paw Patrol action figure. She briefly considers a thing she saw online about saving all the things you find while doing laundry and giving it to your kid on their high school graduation day, but realizes her long game is not that strong (not even close) and decides to put the toy away.
She drops the toy – Chase or Rubble or whoever this happens to be – into the bin while the real (live action) dog lets her know that it is so happy to see her. She’s a great human that needs to be pawed and licked and jumped upon. And also that it needs to go outside now. Like right now. NOW, human!
So she lets the dog out and it sniffs each blade of grass, checking for friends and foes, the urgent need to empty it’s bladder forgotten. While she’s outside, she will won’t be able to recall the last time she checked the mail and she’ll walk to the mailbox with the tiniest bit of hope for something other than junk. As she sorts and walks back to the house, she’ll see the dog finally lift it’s leg on the unsuspecting mailbox post.
When she takes the junk mail inside and to the trash can (despite the hope, everything in the mailbox was junk), she will realize that not one piece of mail can fit into the bag because it is full. Mysterious leaks level of full. At this point she will let out a deep sigh and wonder if every other human in the house has lost their sense of smell. And helpfulness. She resigns herself to take out the trash. Again.
She takes the trash out and holds her breath as she opens and closes the big outdoor can. She knows if she doesn’t replace the bag right away she will forget. As she replace the garbage bag, she will see the little green light that means her faithful dishwasher has completed another cycle, bless. She will stack up the plates, lay the silverware in their drawer beds, and nestle the coffee cups.
When she sees the coffee cups, it will remind her that she never got to finish her cup from this morning. She checks the microwave where she had, at a more naive and hopeful point in her morning, started to reheat it. She decides to give it another try and hits the button to reheat liquids for a minute.
And if you give a mom a minute, she’ll probably run to check the laundry, “just real quick.”
