We're Headed Straight For The Fresh Hell That Is Maycember

This time of year tricks me every single time. Sure, my allergies are a nightmare, but the weather is warm and for a short window of time I get to wear those jackets I bought years ago that are perfect for 65 degrees (and only 65 degrees). And just as I start to get comfortable in light layers while walking the dog... BAM. Maycember hits.

The holiday mental load for moms has long-been documented: the endless gift-buying and wrapping, the parties, the school events, not to mention the mess of holiday illnesses that always seem to rear their ugly heads. But that happens during the winter holidays, and as Ellen Griswold herself said, we’re all in misery during the holidays. May hits different. The weather and impending time sitting poolside reading a book trick you. You think you’re safe and then comes the avalanche of end-of-school nonsense, sports season, and all the stuff you have to do for summer camp.

Cue the Holderness family parodying your life, ever so cooly:

If your life is anything like mine, your weekends haven’t been your own in years. This coming weekend alone, between my two children we have eight sporting events to attend. No birthday parties, so that’s a saving grace, but eight events — some 30 minutes or more away (and that’s a nice break). Now, I love my children as much as the next mom, and I love that they love playing sports (and I love how it tires them out), but I do not love spending my entire weekend sitting on cold, unsupportive bleachers.

And I haven’t even touched on the end-of-school-year events. My kids’ schools — bless them — don’t do real spirit weeks (no alphabet-coded week for my 3rd grader, I’m delighted to say). But we do have Teacher Appreciation Week (and honestly, they deserve so much more than a week), followed by the school fair, followed by a variety of end-of-year in-school events. Have I mentioned the push notifications for any of this yet?

There’s also the super-fun shopping and organization that has to happen for summer camp. There are the supplies — extra long twin sheets only, please — and swim caps and goggles to stock up on. And you have to rack your brain to remember if one kid likes stick sunscreen and refuses to use spray, or if they got over that last summer, and is it finally OK to give them non-kid versions, which are always more expensive, or not.

By May, my kids still have another month of school. But we treat the month as the crescendo, perhaps because the rest of the country is almost out for summer. Which means that by the time June — and its infinite, annoying half days — rolls around, we are all, collectively, over it. So while I’m working to hold it together until the sweet release of summer, my kids get crankier and crankier as the month continues.

Look, I know my family is lucky — I get it — but there is no fresher hell than having to keep everything in order when mentally you are already hanging on by a thread. Cause, by May, that’s what I am. By May, I want to be in my natural habitat: sprawled out in the sun, reading a book, being ignored and ignoring everyone around me. But alas, that’s not to be, cause it’s Maycember.

Kate Auletta is the Editor-in-Chief at Scary Mommy. She’s a native New Yorker and a 2004 graduate of Davidson College, where she majored in History. She’s the mom of two delightfully rambunctious sons, whom she shares with her husband, along with an equally delightful and but certainly more rambunctious cavapoo named Franklin.