Karen Johnson is a stay-at-home mum who has a whole summer of mischief to cope with.
The mum-of-three is already counting down the days until the school term picks back up, and following her description of her day to day ‘shit-show’ we totally understand why.
Setting a homely scene for her readers at 21st Century SAHM, Karen describes the beautiful serene moment she is standing at the stove, making lunch for her three children.
The cheese is being grilled when the mum’s eight-year-old son pops up, asking can he collect the mail.
Her four-year-old son, who suffers from FOMO (fear of missing out), pipes up to say he wants to go too, so naturally chuffed the boys want to help, Mum sends them out to collect the post.
All the while, she was thinking to herself: “How could this go wrong? Such a simple task.”
Wrong. It’s never THAT simple.
Karen reveals that her boys have a penchant for fighting, all the time. They fight over everything.
So when her six-year-old ‘reporter’ daughter comes running into the kitchen where the mum-of-three was cooking, screaming:
“They're fighting at the mailbox! And then mail went flying everywhere all over the neighbourhood!”
Karen wasn’t overly surprised at all.
“I abandon lunch and sprint outside. I see both boys scrambling around from yard to yard, trying to grab pieces of mail.”
“My four-year-old is now approaching the corner where our quiet cul-de-sac meets a very busy street, and I know him.”
“He'll think nothing of running directly into the street in order to capture that last piece of random junk mail that Mummy will be tossing as soon as we get home.”
Karen begins to dart toward her son, preventing him from accessing the road while also capturing post which has begun to scatter the neighbours’ lawns, and they finally head homeward.
But not before disaster number two strikes with her youngest:
“Because he's four, he refuses to walk anywhere ever, and he is on an anti-shoes campaign this summer.”
So once again, Karen is left unimpressed when the four-year-old runs down the street barefoot and falls, cuts his foot and she has to carry him home:
“I am half-carrying, half dragging a bloody-footed, crying four-year-old, a crying eight-year-old who thinks he's in trouble because of mail-mageddon, and piles and piles of junk mail and flyers that I will never look at ever back to my house.”
And then disaster number three strikes:
“Once the papers are tossed and the bloody foot is bandaged, we all smell the sulphur of burning grilled cheese and I remember what I was doing before this all happened.”
We are actually sweating even thinking about this - welcome to summer mums. On the plus side though, we're taking tips on Karen's next move:
“So I did what any good mother would do. I scraped off the burnt parts, threw them on plates, and said bon appetit, kids. And I poured this beer.”
Our kids just finished school last week; however, Karen’s tots have been running free for almost a month, so we can only guess what we have to look forward to - we’re already done.
