Vacation day!

Good morning!

I have a vacation day, today. It's 7:00 am. I've been awake since 5:30 because--I'm a mom.

Vacation days now that I have three kids are very different from vacation days when I used to work, pre-kids.

For one thing, at this very moment, two of my children are pounding on things. My 7 year old has drumsticks and he's pounding on a BJ's Warehouse sized box of oatmeal and the metal paper towel dispenser. The baby is pounding on the front of the stove with the flat of his hand. Meanwhile, my 10 year old is asking me questions and chatting away about something. I'm half-listening amidst the din. As I write.

Pre-children, vacation days were quiet.

The 7-year-old has now put down the drumsticks and is doing "hi-yah!" karate stuff at the baby, who's running away from him. Now the baby's hanging on to my leg because he's afraid of his brother. And my 10-year-old is asking me to put a link to her website on my page.

In books, especially romance books, people have several children. Usually four, for some reason. They are well-behaved. The adults don't feel exhausted around them. There is no screaming. Or questions asked in the middle of chaos. No barking dogs. No tupperware container covers strewn on the kitchen floor, or spilled dog-water or hi-yah! hi-yah! hi-YAH! Everyone is cheerful. People can talk. People can think.

Then again, it is fiction.

Funny, too, how the formerly alpha males in books manage to absorb the chaos and remain cheerful. In fact, they've become beta males. No, wait...they've become completely emasculated. (It's fiction!) I know this is not what happens in real life because I married an alpha male. I know the first rule of alpha males is: Once an alpha, always an alpha. And when real alpha males are confronted with kid chaos, they stand there and yell until everyone else is quiet (or cowering). Alpha males can't help it. They can't stand other people's noise because they have to be the loudest.

So vacation days are nice, but...I think I'd rather be at work.