By Joy McLaughlin 
If you give a mom a bouquet…
She goes to grab a vase to put it in.
As she grabs the vase, she also grabs the duster because she knows the spot for the vase is probably dusty and she has guests coming for dinner.
As she begins dusting, she notices the stack of books that needs to go back on the shelf.
When she gets to the shelf, she sees the bendy action figures in battle formation that need to go back in the bin.
When she gets to the bin, she spots the toy food that needs to go to the cute little play kitchen.
When she gets to the play kitchen, she sees some little one decorated the toy sink with real yogurt, so she goes to grab a paper towel.
When she gets there, she sees the paper towel roll is empty, so she goes to the pantry.
Once in the pantry, she decides it’s the perfect time to clean it out because she can’t deal with the mess any longer, so she pulls everything out and reorganizes.
Once she has reorganized, she boxes up the miscellaneous utensils and appliances she wants to donate. She takes them out to the car so she doesn’t forget to load them and sees the utter chaos in the car.
She spends the next hour taking everything out, vacuuming, scrubbing, and discarding leftover papers and food wrappers. She even takes the car seat covers in to be washed.
When she gets to the laundry room, she notices the laundry that needs to be switched.
When she puts the clothes from the dryer on the overstuffed chair, she figures she better fold them now or they’ll sit there for days.
When she takes the folded clothes upstairs to the kids’ rooms to put them away, she can’t even walk on the floor because of the toys and dirty clothes, so she starts straightening up.
As she cleans up, she finds old cereal bowls with spoons and realizes that’s where all the spoons have gone, so she stacks them up and takes them right down to the kitchen sink.
When she reaches the sink, it is piled high with dirty dishes, so she decides to load the dishwasher right then and there, realizing she has to unload the clean dishes first.
While unloading, she sees Sarah’s casserole dish she needs to return and decides to text Sarah right then to see if she can drop it off on the way to soccer practice. She looks for her phone and can’t find it, searches high and low, only to discover it on the bookshelf, with the duster.
And when she sees the duster, she remembers she wanted to dust because guests are coming for dinner.
And then she remembers, she still needs to make dinner.
by Carolyn Moore 
by Kaylin Stravalli 
by Wendy Buck 
