Yesterday was one of those days we were all still stumbling over our newly sandaled feet having woken up several hours too early the night before and then tried to adjust to this totally-welcome yet absurdly hot, March weather.
I think we were all feeling like daylight savings time when you have to walk gingerly and try not to operate heavy machinery except this felt like we had lost not just an hour, but an entire clothing season and there was no way to slowly show our bare feet to the world. The high boot Band-Aids were being ripped off by a perspiring weather man with a smug smile on his face.
We managed to get one kid on the bus, the other to art class and that’s where it happened. The idea of an online contest was introduced and Ellie’s focus went from non-existent to all consuming.
“Mom, can we enter the contest?”
“Sure honey, what contest?”
“The art contest online. We need to go online and enter the contest.”
“Deal. Let’s go home and put away the groceries and empty the contest…..I mean enter the contest. Did I say empty? I’m really tired.”
We arrived in our driveway after a lengthy conversation about turtles and contests. The driveway was Ellie’s hypnotic cue to ramp up her incessant questioning about the online, entry form for the art contest.
Maybe I was overtired, maybe the groceries were heavy, maybe I wanted to wash the cart handle from my hands, none of which was going to deter Ellie from riding my heels and asking to get cracking on operation “Online contest entry” aka “OCE.”
I pumped the hand soap, “Can we check the contest?”
I opened the fridge, “Mom, the contest.”
I experienced a satisfyingly long blink and felt my body sway to the side but was jolted awake by, “Mom, the contest! It’s going to be over!”
I turned on the kettle, “Hello? Contest?”
I grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds, “Mom I think the contest is ready.”
I shoved cotton in my ears, I put on a cucumber slice mask, I hummed, yawned, chewed and turned on some music while crinkling tissue paper in and around my head, still I heard, “We really should check the contest.”
If there’s one thing I love when I’m barely awake enough to hold a piece of tissue paper without using it as a drool-catcher—
And that’s a good old fashioned, online, art contest.
