Being  a parent means life is riddled with things that will scare the ever living shit out of you.  And I am not talking about the big things but rather the little things we don’t usually plan on.

For instance, things that are wet when there is no water in sight.  What is it really? Pee? Juice? Water, Vomit?  The possibilities are limitless and often result in you having to sterilize whatever it is that is wet for the simple fact that you aren’t taking any chances.

Another thing that scares me is kids that sneeze when they have a mouthful of food.  You know damn well that all those particles are just going to fly out at a million miles and hour and cover anything in sight.  Another cause for sterilization.

Silence scares me.  Silence happens when mommy tries to go to the bathroom in peace or make a phone call without interruption.  Left to their own devices for those few brief moments, silence happens.  And silence usually means trouble and a big mess.  Silence often means something has been broken, damaged, or destroyed (not necessarily intentionally mind you – but it has happened none-the-less).  Silence usually equates to markers on wall, stamping ink on the furniture, super sticky stickers on your good table, a dresser completely emptied of it’s contents – to name a few.  Silence usually is followed yelling and crying.

Homework scares me – specifically my kids’ math homework.  I’m sorry but I didn’t understand half of this math when I was in school.  And I am not really doing much better this second time around.  Thank goodness for google and You-tube.  Those tutorials are a god send because I don’t have a friggin clue how to solve for “x” any more today than I did 20 years ago.

Checking my kids’ online grade-book scares me.  I never quite know what I am going to find when I log in.  And nothing ruins my day faster than seeing that my kid either bombed something that I knew nothing about or bombed the very thing that we reviewed for a million hours the day before.

When my kids announce they have a project due – well that just sends chills down my spine.  Any mother knows that that project will in someway become your project.  After all, you will be one who will have to be on them to read the associated material.  And,  then there is a very strong possibility that you will have to read it as well for the sole purpose of ensuring that what they are assembling is actually correct.  If you read my post on my kids’ inability to be grammatically correct, you will also understand that a school project in my household is a literary nightmare.  Rough drafts are truly that – rough and a test of the English language.  School projects mean I have to figure out what the hell they are trying to say because if I have no clue, then the teacher certainly won’t have one either.

My kids’ proclaiming that they have no homework scares me because I just know that the chances of that actually being true are slim to none.  Proclamations of no homework means I have to scour their assignment books and online assignment boards all in an effort to determine the validity of the claim.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s not as if my kids are intentionally lying to me, but rather they are seriously absent-minded when it comes to their work.  They can’t remember what they did five minutes before much less what they did in school.  Ridiculous yes, but it is the reality I live in.  And if you ask them why they didn’t write it down, they will tell you flat out that they forgot.

And the final thing that will make any parent’s heart race.  That’s driving in the car when my kid in the back seat announces that they feel like they are going to be sick and you have neither a plastic bag nor a napkin anywhere to be found.  You are just praying to God that you can find a spot to pull before they blow chunks all over your seats.