Spin Cycle: The Great and Mighty Gretchen

Pull up a seat, folks, and get yourself comfortable while I tell you the tale of the Great and Mighty Gretchen, the best menopausal, multi-tasking mother in all the west.

One morning, not so very long ago, the Great and Mighty Gretchen woke up and realized that her alarm clock had failed. The Kid had to be at school in just 10 minutes!

Undaunted, Gretchen sent her faithful sidekick Fancy the Little Black Dog to wake up the kid, while she ran to the kitchen. With one carefully aimed swing of her mighty arm, Gretchen hit the side of the refrigerator, sending a spray of nutritious and delicious lunch foods shooting out of the fridge and straight into the lunch box which she held in front of her. With her right foot, she punched the "on" button on the Keurig coffeemaker while with her left foot she pulled two slices of bread and a slice of bacon out of the fridge. Using nothing but her bare hands and the heat from her latest hot flash, the Great and Mighty Gretchen toasted the bread and fried the bacon in mere seconds, then tossed them across the kitchen and straight into the open mouth of The Kid.

5 minutes to 8:00, and school's a 10 minute drive! No problem. In a flash, Gretchen fashions her trusty Prius into a rocket ship, fueled by her own belly fat. She loads The Kid and Fancy the Little Black Dog into the Prius rocket, balances a cup of coffee on her knee and they blast into the sky, soaring over the El Salvadorian Restaurant, the medical marijuana store and a number of cheap Korean furniture stores, and land right in the schoolyard. Hurray!

Back home again, it's time to clean the house! The Great and Mighty Gretchen stands in the middle of the living room and starts to spin and spin until she causes a tornado to rise up and propel all of the clutter back into its place and make the beds. The dust bunnies knit together to form handy trash receptacles which the tornado shoots out to the curb and into the trash cans.

Gretchen then makes her way into the kitchen, strips off her clothes and grabs the bottle of dishwashing liquid. Turning on the hot water and shooting the sink sprayer up into the air, she turns the entire kitchen into a giant dishwasher, using her body to scrub the dishes, the counters and the floor from top to bottom. When both Gretchen and the kitchen are sparkling clean, she uses the heat from yet another hot flash to dry the room and her own hair.

Ready to do a little writing, Gretchen sits in the office and turns on both her and The Kid's computers. On one computer she writes a blog post with her left hand, while on the other computer, she writes her book with her right hand. What's this? A phone call from her mother-in-law Mommy? No problem, she answers the phone with her toes and hits the speaker phone button, then continues to write while she listens to Mommy talk on and on about whether she needs to go with paint or wallpaper when she redoes the kitchen. A prerecorded message which says "Uh-huh, uh-huh, ooooooh, I agree." over and over plays so that Gretchen can keep working and not have to listen too carefully.

Time for some grocery shopping. List in hand, Gretchen mounts herself to the front of her grocery cart like a figurehead on the front of a ship and propels herself at top speed down each aisle, expertly grabbing all the food and goods she needs. Forced to wait in the checkout line, Gretchen uses the time to read a book or two and maybe play a few levels of Farm Heroes Saga on her phone.

After The Kid gets home from school, it's time to start cooking dinner. Using 4 knives at the same time, one in each hand and one for each foot, the Great and Mighty Gretchen peels and chops all of the foods they will need for every meal that week. Whirling around the kitchen amid the triangulation of her sink, stove and refrigerator, she carefully arranges all ingredients into bags which she pops into the refrigerator, each labeled with a Sharpie, which she wields with her teeth. Dinner tonight? Enchiladas, prepared, cooked and ready to eat by the time Jimmy arrives home from working. "Honey I'm home!"

What does Gretchen do to wind down at the end of a hard day of multi-tasking? A hot bath, of course, and while she's taking her long hot bath, she balances the laptop on the toilet and works on her two other part time jobs all while reading The Kid a bedtime story over the headset which she has strapped to her head.

Time to sleep, but the work is never done for the Great and Mighty Gretchen. During her sleep, she washes multiple loads of laundry (aided by Fancy the Little Black Dog, who drags the clothes in and out of the washer and dryer with her teeth) and powered by the movement of the menopause-induced restless leg syndrome.

And that's the tale of the Great and Mighty Gretchen. Some of the story is fictional. Who wants to write it into a folk song?

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Check out our other Tall Tales Spinners!!

And come back on Monday when Ginny Marie and I assign our Spin Cycle topic for next week!

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Ginny Marie]

I could totally visualize you using a hot flash to dry your hair! And it looks fabulous! If only I could get rid of my belly fat by driving the kids to school.

Hurray for the Great and Mighty Gretchen! :)

[Jan's Sushi Bar]

I WAS going to say, "Who knew hot flashes were so powerful?"

Yeah...I do.

I need to crochet you a cape.

[VandyJ]

I feel exactly like this during parts of my day. A multitasking whirling dervish. If only we could do all that, the days that followed would be so much easier--at least in the kitchen.

[Janice]

I thought we were to write a tall tale. And here you have just told what you did yesterday. Love the post as I visualized you doing all these astounding feats. Well, everything except the naked part. At that point I thought of what would happen if my triple D elongated boobs went into action. I fear I might strangle myself.

[Lulu]

You confused me with the naked part, especially when I don't read you getting dressed again!!?? I can see the naked writing, but grocery shopping??? ha ha Storm on!!

[Kristina Walters @ Kris On Fitness]

Wow you are Super Gretchen! I would love to be able to multitask like that! Wow!

[Arnebya]

I wish it were easier to figure out which parts were fiction.