Life
I'm not here to debate who has it worse, a stay-at-home mom or a working mom. I am here, however, to say that a stay-at-home mom rarely gets to enjoy her coffee in the fashion that it is mean to be enjoyed: hot. Coffee, that lifeblood that nearly every mom relies on, is a sad thing when imbibed lukewarm. And yet, a cup of cold coffee is the drink of the day in many a stay-at-home mom's house. There are so many reasons a stay-at-home mom's coffee will always be cold — too many to capture in just one sitting, honestly — but I've highlighted a few.
In our house, the cold coffee situation is exacerbated by the fact that we do not own a microwave. My husband is super anti-microwave, and ever since we moved in together he's been on a mission to wean me off microwaves. When I go to people's houses where microwave are available, it doesn't even dawn on me that I can reheat my coffee by using one, because he's got me so hooked on his crusade. All that is to show that when my coffee gets cold, it's game over for my cup of coffee (and basically my whole morning is ruined).
Perhaps that explains why I'm in a crap mood for the entire portion of the day that's spent with my kids up until we leave the house and I purchase a cup of hot coffee. I make it my mission to stay the course and enjoy my coffee before anyone can distract me from my task, and for some reason, when I have coffee outside of the house I'm able to mostly drink it before it becomes ice cold. I think it is because I usually let the children destroy whatever cafe we've bought the coffee from, but I digress. Hot coffee at home is an exercise in futility, because as most stay-at-home moms know, children will do almost anything to prohibit you from having it.
Because She Got Pulled Into An Impromptu Dance-Off
A stay-at-home mom knows that she's got to be limber and warmed up at all times because, at any moment, she could be swept up into a choreographed dance. When you're home for hours because the weather just isn't all that friendly toward outdoor play, that means you have to burn off steam in other creative ways. Cue all those great Wii Just Dance videos and other YouTube videos.
She Had To Go Be A Horsey
A stay-at-home mom wears many hats over the course of a day, and sometimes that hat looks more like a horse saddle. She may have thought she was about to enjoy a sip of hot coffee, but then a small person informed her it was time to get on all fours and take them on a ride around the kitchen.
Someone Needed The Potty Five Minutes Too Late
Potty training can be a real bitch, especially when you're just trying to enjoy your damn coffee and your little one lets you know that he needs to use the potty but you can tell that he's clued you in about five minutes after the fact.
Sadly, this is my life more often than I'd like to admit, as we are still potty training our 3-year-old and I'm still missing the cues that should be obvious to me by now. I mean, what else is he doing when he's standing by the couch corner on the other side of the room, humming to himself? By the time I've cleaned up the whole mess, disinfected the bathroom, and given him a rinse, my once-hot coffee is no more.
She Discovered Where Yesterday's Missing Chocolate Chip Cookie Went
The stay-at-home mom tends to have more time to make little everyday discoveries around her abode, by pure virtue of the fact that she spends more time there than a lot of other moms. That means that when she happens upon the now-melted chocolate chip cookie that got smushed between the couch cushions, she has no choice but to put down her coffee and get to work. This will probably be a lengthy process because the chocolate has managed to maintain a gooey, almost viscous quality since it's been blazing in the hot rays of the sun coming through her living room window for hours.
She Unknowingly Poured The Oatmeal Packet Into The Bowl Herself, Not Realizing She Was Supposed To Let Her Kid Do It
How dare she. The stay-at-home mom made the grave error of pouring the oatmeal her kid requested for breakfast into the bowl herself, forgetting that that is the kid's actual job. She had to then forget enjoying a hot cup of coffee, because she had to calm a tantrum, throw out the "bad" oatmeal, make a new oatmeal, and watch her kid ceremoniously dump half of the new oatmeal pack on the floor as her own coffee cooled.
She Was Busy Making A "House"
The other day I thought I was going to have a few minutes to enjoy my coffee and listen to a podcast about how our country is all going to hell, but no. My children were screaming from my bedroom that they needed me to help them make a house. On my bed. Which, by the way, I had already meticulously made with my nice throw pillows and the "good" blanket that I don't like anyone to sit on with "outside clothes."
I went in to quickly prop up some pillows so I could go back to my "me time," but of course my efforts were not enough. Once the pillows were up, they needed a roof, and once I tried to put on a roof, the roof was not big enough. And so on and and so forth until, you guessed it, I had a cup of cold coffee.
Because She Got Out Of The Shower Prematurely
Little people pop in and out of bathrooms with requests and complaints or just to stare for no reason, so a stay-at-home mom is probably used to it by now. But if a stay-at-home mom's coffee is cold, it is probably because one of her kids told her that their sibling turned the oven on and she had to run out of the shower and save the house from burning down. Then she probably forgot that she hadn't rinsed her hair until later, after she poured herself some coffee, and noticed her hair felt tacky.
She Was Called Into A Very Important Meeting
She thought she was going to have some coffee, but there was a very important meeting about which Transformers were going to make it to her son's Birthday Wish List that needed to be had, like, immediately.
