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Everything was my fault

I woke up with a start. I was dreaming that in some perverse and twisted universe, my husband’s stinky work clothes had gotten mixed in with my whites.

I woke up with a start. I was dreaming that in some perverse and twisted universe, my husband’s stinky work clothes had gotten mixed in with my whites.

I’d tell you more about it but thankfully memory loss has dulled the nightmare almost completely from my recollection.

At the time, however, the sudden awakening made me wonder about my real-life washing adventures. I ran down to the basement while still wiping the sleep out of my droopy eyelids. Perhaps it is a mothering thing, or a pinprick of OCD, but I knew something had gone awry in the laundry room.

Our roommate, as sweet as he was trying to be, had unknowingly swapped a load of my delicates into the dryer. Some of items were unharmed, some salvageable and others … well, may they rest in peace. I shouldn’t have left them in the washing machine to hang dry at a later time; I should have just finished the job then and there. It was my own fault.

And that exact sentence seemed to become the ongoing theme of my awful day.

I had set out to do cleaning, doing some really great work on the kitchen floors as we were planning on hosting a get together that night. Lars had a birthday party to attend at one in the afternoon, which was going to work out perfectly because I’d be down one kid to go and do groceries for said evening party.

By noon, Lars was bugging me almost every other minute, asking when we were to set off to the party. I finally got fed up and walked over to the brightly-coloured invitation hung on our fridge to show him the time posted on it.

I froze upon opening up the card. It was not 1 p.m. that the party started but actually 11 a.m. It was as though my guts had swiftly moved up into my throat and any sudden movement would cause them to come pouring out of me. Eventually, I would have to move — eventually, I would have to tell Lars about my senselessness.

We raced to the car and sped to the party locale. We had missed the first half but we were just in time for cake and pizza. Lars didn’t let me forget that I was the one who made him miss half the party and guilt gobbled me up with every side-eyed look I received from the on-time moms. But what was I supposed to say? It was my own fault for being disorganized.

We went grocery shopping after the last half of the party; Lars was still stewing about his loss of partying time. He was being very unco-operative and Sophie decided to follow suit with her big brother. I had two cantankerous children, a cart with a bum wheel and a dinner menu list in my head that is quickly being pushed out by mounting anxieties.

As I unpack all the groceries at home, I realize I’ve forgotten more than half of what I needed. Need I say it? Sure, I’ll say it: it was my own fault; a list probably would have been a good thing.

I decided I could make do, however, and set in on peeling beets for my beet and goat cheese salad. To top my day off, I just finished wiping down some particularly dirty mushrooms and it seemed that the purple beetroot combined with the excess mushroom mess on my fingertips made for an extremely unpleasing visual.

Thank God I was done leaving my house for the day.

Think again.

Lars rushed me while I chopped up a rather juicy beet and said, “Don’t get mad, but there is a bead stuck in my ear.”

You’re joking right?

No siree — no joke. And it is really in there, too, so far back in fact that it can only be seen if his head it tilted at the perfect angle with a very intense light shining in there.

As we sat in the emergency waiting room, I glanced down at my disgusting-looking hands.

They reminded me of a marker explosion combined with a diaper job gone terribly wrong. I should have washed them before we left. I should have checked the birthday party invitation twice. I should have been watching more closely so he didn’t stick a bead in his damn ear.

But as Lars lays his head on my shoulder, I feel easiness between us. I am here for him now, and always will be when he needs me. As parents, we are going to drop the proverbial ball — let’s face it, with these 24-hour work days and the teeming pressure we face, it’s inevitable.

And even though some days it seems to be all our fault, I’m just glad I can be the one who holds his hand and tells him that everything is going to “bead” OK.

And he laughs and tells me that I’m the best.

Lindsay Brown is a Sylvan Lake mother of two and freelance columnist.