My Chicks

I'm standing in line at the Sam's Club snack bar trying to get a pretzel before I keel over and I'm watching the snack lady. She's hoppin' around, singing to herself and occasionally when someone walks by she knows, she looks up from making our pretzels and yells hello with a cute little joke and laughs so loud it echos through the entire store. I'm amused watching this lady's joyful expressions of life and I'm thinking to myself, "Is she really this energetic? How could she be this energetic?"
At that moment she turns to me and says, out of the blue, "I have so much energy I stay up till 3 am every morning and I'm 50 years old!"
I'm just starring at her thinking "Oh ya, well, I'm 33 and I feel like 50, so let me hop around and tell you all about it."
She continues to go on and on about how good she feels all the time and then she stops and looks around like she's come to a realization..."Maybe", she says, "it's because I don't have any kids."
AH HAH! The reason is discovered!
At that moment the words went through my mind of a sign I have hanging on my living room wall. It reads, "Motherhood is like being slowly pecked to death by chickens".
I don't know about other mom's...you know the one's that look so put together with unstained shirts and pants that actually fit, and have not only THEIR hair perfect but their kids' hair pulled up in a very creative sort of way with a matching bow. I don't know about them, they look like the snack lady with all the energy.
I on the other hand, feel very not-put-together while I'm dragging my kid off the display racks of a department store or trying desperately to hunt him down (with the help of security and all the doors locked) at the Logan Regional Hospital.
It's moments like this when that saying gets a little too real for me, like these little daily doses of Kryptonite are enough to slowly knock off Superman.
And I'm thinking, as the snack lady is wrapping up our pretzels, that a 110 year old grandma would have that much energy if she didn't have kids sucking the life right out of her.
Then I turn around, and sitting so perfectly in the cart are my three little chicks. They're not running wild through the aisles, they're just sitting there patiently awaiting their pretzels and looking so beautiful and perfect. Then I think about that 110 year old grandma who has all the energy she wants...but then again, she wouldn't be a grandma would she?