Epitaph

Have you ever thought about what your gravestone might say about you?  I like what Winston Churchill had engraved on his:

I am ready to meet my Maker.

Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

I've often thought/joked that mine would say something like:

Here lies a woman who multi-tasked herself to death.

Did a dozen things at once and ran out of breath.

Last night for example, I had to catch my breathe as I realized that I was responding to a work email, making dinner, doing the dishes, bouncing a toddler on my hip and acting as referee and mediator of the dispute between my other two children in the other room -- all at the same time.  

An hour later, I was rushing down the stairs with a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner and a toilet scrubber, three small trash cans, a dirty diaper and two sippy cups overflowing from my arms.  My husband simply commented:  "I thought you were giving the kids baths."  "Oh, I am," was all I responded.  I was in fact bathing three children (one in one shower, the other in another shower, and the third already out of the tub), but I was also cleaning toilets and tubs, polishing faucets, sinks and mirrors, putting away laundry, emptying trash cans, revising a legal brief, and too many other mundane things to list.  This is my life. Welcome.  You wouldn't want it.   

My husband actually doesn't recognize multi-tasking as a talent.  He thinks it shows lack of focus and lack of care.  He may be right (at least about the focus part).  But I will say that if there were an Olympic multi-tasking event, I might just have a chance at glory.