Kind of a Wife Swap

Do you watch the show Wife Swap ? It's a big hit in our house. In fact, my daughters and I have often joked about signing up for the show.

Last week, I handed my entire household over to one very brave woman and I flew to the other side of the country. For nearly seven days, she followed my notes, ran the children hither and yon, feed, cared and cleaned up after (bad dog!) the beasts, helped with homework and projects, kept on top of the laundry and dishes and collapsed at the end of every day as I do.

No, no, no this was not for national television. This saint I speak of is my mother. Of course, she has had the kids in her care before but this time was different. This time she was me. There was no vacation, theme park, hotel room or room service. The kids weren't at her house or on school holiday. There were no diversions or changes in our normally packed schedule. She walked in my shoes for a week and didn't stumble or complain even when there was a book report to help write and Great Dane mess on the floor.

You could say that I'm impressed but then again this is the woman that raised me and my two sisters almost single-handedly. So I guess I am impressed that she took over my leading role with such ease but I'm not at all surprised by her success.

What surprised me the most was the amount of paperwork I ended up generating for my dear mother to keep her on track and hopefully somehow sane. Imagine if you were to actually document on paper what you do every day for a week, including where you must go and how to get there. I'm here to tell you that the amount of information you'd spit out would floor you. I ended up with ten pages typed and kept thinking of more to text & email her while I was gone. Holy over-scheduling! I'm not tooting my own horn or anything but writing my week out did give me a solid sense of accomplishment. Looking at that stack of pages made me proud of how hard I work to keep my family humming along on a daily basis. It felt good. It also felt good to leave it for a while.

In the end, our pseudo wife swap was a huge success. I returned home to happy daughters, folded laundry and a mother with her suitcase in hand ready to roll out the door. So maybe she was in a bit of a hurry to have a moment of peace after living in my shoes for a week, but she sure did one hell of a job being our head of household in my absence.

Maybe next time, I'll ask her to guest post on my blog and teach my Jazzercise classes as well. That is, if she ever agrees to a next time ;-)

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You can find Kimberly in Petroville where she lives and writes daily. An original DC Metro Moms post