Attention, Please: I Am On The Hunt For A Sister Wife

As soon as I open my eyes in the morning it begins: The race of the day. I know I won’t stop running around until the moon is high in the sky. Even then, my mom brain doesn’t shut off quite a soon as I would like. The rushing, the double-checking, the making sure the animals are fed and the bathroom floor is free of pee so no one slips and breaks an arm. Somebody give me some caffeine and a side of patience, and I just may make it through this day.

Better yet, give me another me. If I could clone myself, it would help me out in a big way.

I get all my kids to school (only a few minutes late), and out of the corner of my eye, I see you over there, fellow mom. You are just as frazzled as I am. I can tell by your loose ponytail and the way you peel out of the school parking lot after dropping off your own kids. You have shit to do and are probably at least a half-hour behind, just like the rest of us.

But damn, you are a master at coaching basketball. I was watching you last week, and you really do know how to teach those kids to play fair. You have a way of remaining stoic when the referee makes a bad call and never overuse your whistle. You didn’t even get mad when you told Emma she couldn’t chew gum during the game, and she spit it out at your feet.

Meanwhile, I can barely remember which one of my kids is playing. I certainly have no idea if my child is wearing the right shirt for today’s game, and believe you me, if someone spit gum at me, I would walk off the damn court and hand my whistle over to the next available parent.

You mentioned wishing you could bake like me during the last bake sale, but it stresses you out to get all the ingredients and mixing bowls out. Your kitchen being turned upside down is not your idea of fun, and having your cakes always fall flat has exhausted you. But that shit is my therapy, and by the way, I had to skip the PTA meeting to get these cookies looking like this. I heard you were there though, with your whistle.

I have a proposition for you: Will you be my sister wife? Let’s not fight it. I can bake, you can coach, and we can take turns picking up the dry cleaning. It sounds like a match made in mommy heaven. Let’s split the chores right down the middle. I can take on twice the kids if I am only doing this gig part-time. It’s the full-time bullshit that really throws my balance out of whack.

I will sign a contract right now. We both want this, and we know it. I can be there to pick up the kids from school, get into thesaurus-mode, answer a million questions, and then feed them a snack. I am kind of an expert at that. It will be a good time for you to go get a latte and relax, with your bestie or alone, whichever you prefer. Make sure you sign up for the pole-dancing class you’ve been wanting to take that you didn’t think you had time for. Guess what, sister? You’ve got time now, and that shit is good exercise — just make sure it doesn’t conflict with my spin class on Wednesday and Friday nights.

Surely after such a refreshing outing, much-needed girl talk, and a week’s worth of caffeine, you will be refreshed and ready to tackle bedtime duty with the hubs every night. Sounds fair, don’t ya think?

If you host birthday parties for my kids, I promise to always pay the bills and fill out the school paperwork. Yep, all of it. I will even throw in making dentist and doctor’s appointments for everyone, including your husband’s vasectomy. Hell, I’ll even drop him off. I just can’t do the parties with all the wanting, fighting over gifts, and arguing about who gets to blow out the candles. I am pretty sure I am allergic to bounce houses and screaming.

Every alternating Thursday and Saturday, I will do the deep cleaning if you tackle the grocery shopping. I can make a list according to how the store is laid out if I don’t have to do the actual shopping. I’ll even clip the coupons and alphabetize them. I’ll have the time for that and all the baking because you will be attending the PTA meetings, right? And if you occasionally forget to pick up my favorite cheese, I won’t even get mad. That’s how glad I am going to be that I don’t have to go to those damn meetings.

We can take our kids to the playground together and stare into our phones in shifts. I’ll take the first one and be sure to make sure Tommy isn’t being too much of an asshole to the other kids so you can enjoying catching up on Instagram without interruption so long as I get to add lots of baking ideas to my Pinterest board without having to watch anyone go down the tube slide for my kid-free hour.

I mean, we are both still here with our children — we are just spreading out the gigantic task known as motherhood and quality playtime. I think this is an excellent idea. The phrase divide and conquer is dead to me. I say combine forces and get stuff done without losing our shit because there are two of us and life is so so much better this way.

I get to do what works best for me, what I enjoy most, what fuels me. You get to do the same. It just happens they are different things.

But what about if we fight? Nah. We will be too relaxed for that shit.

And what about your husband? You can keep him. And you definitely do not have to share.

What do you say? Just sign here…