Finally turned in my Marketing paper today, all 80 pages.  Spent nearly every waking, non-blogging hour on it for a week, only gotten 3 to 5 hours of sleep each night.

I’m whipped.

Due to a problem with my paper, I’m running late.  I don’t get to my son in time after his morning class ends.  He stays and visits with the rest of the kids until I get there.  I feel like the mother from hell on arrival.  (Fortunately he’s not distraught about my tardiness – he actually wants to stay the rest of the day.)

So I cave in, take him to McDonald’s as a reward for putting up with Mommy Dearest.

He’s wound like a top, spinning and spinning, mouth motoring a mile a minute, pure energy and excitement as we get our Chicken McNugget lunch and go into the McDonaldland play area.

And I step into another world.

Heretofore when going to McDonald’s, I’ve taken the kids for dinner or on weekends.  Never midday-weekday.  Wow.  BIG difference.

Weekend mornings sees a spectrum, moms and dads, grandparents and aunts and uncles escorting children.  They bring the newspaper or friends, read or gossip, occasionally peek at the little darlings.  Bob might run into Harry, do the “hail-fellow-well-met” thing; Sue and Linda might be gossiping intermittently while screaming at kids.

Not today.

It was a sea of mothers.  Moms at every table.  Estrogen central.  And a sh*tload of kids 5 years and younger.  One woman had her entire tabletop covered with paper, a calculator and a checkbook; she looked very much at home and wrote checks for an hour.  Another couple of mothers compared notes on schools and potty training.  They all looked like this was familiar turf, sprawled and comfortable body language reinforcing this

And I sat there, by myself, feeling like an invader, an impostor, a “not-Mom”.

I’d had enough when my hackles went up; the women a couple tables over looked like they were talking about me.  I wrapped up my son and his Happy Meal and bailed.

Damn, I need a nap BADLY after seeing all those Stepford Wives.  No more trips to McDonald’s for lunch!

5:10:25 PM    comment []