Priorities

     You come home in a rush, with a plan in mind on how you are going to get the kids settled, clean up a little bit and get yourself ready for a night out starting at 6 pm.  You are running a little bit late because your son at school needed to show you his latest fortune teller that he's made and each fortune.  It takes you a moment to decide if your favorite fortune is "You will be dehydrated" or "You will fart gold".  After an extra five minutes spent zipping up the coat and such, you head out the door determined to get home in time to do a load of dishes and vacuum the floor before the babysitter arrives.  Is it strange to want to clean a little bit before a teenager comes over to watch your children?  Perhaps.  But isn't it also strange to clean before the cleaning lady comes over.  I mean, not that I get a cleaning lady myself but that's in the job description, right?  Although... perhaps if that's someone's job and they come over and you have a messy house, they would be quicker to judge than, say, a teenager who has moldy English muffins under the bed and dirty clothes from middle school still strewn on the floor.  Stop!  You are digressing and you need to rush home.
     You get home, motivated by a rare night out to get everything in order.  You may even squeeze in that load of dishwashing.  But then something stands in your way.  Something completely ridiculous.  A knotted Yo-Yo string.  Had someone said to you, "When you get home, instead of cleaning and getting the house in order, getting the kids settled and yourself ready, you will need to spend 20-30 minutes untangling a Yo-Yo string" you would have laughed it off.  You would have visualized yourself putting that Yo-Yo away immediately or perhaps even just throwing it out.  But in this case, your oldest son has a new obsession with Yo-Yo's and doesn't want to stop playing with his new Yo-Yo, which is making your youngest son jealous and so you go off in search of the old Yo-Yo (instead of cleaning, settling the kids in and getting yourself ready).  And when you find that old Yo-Yo you realized it is completely tangled up.  So you sit down for a *couple* of minutes to straighten it out so that both kids can have potentially dangerous objects on strings to play with in front of the flat screen TV.  10 Minutes later, you feel like you're making some amount of progress but then the younger one is getting impatient watching his older brother struggle with his Yo-Yo so the younger one starts sitting on one of your arms, mauling your head, twiddling with your hair (I hate that!) and generally being a nuisance.  20 Minutes later you are ready to throw in the towel but you feel that just a couple more loops- and... nope.  Damn it, now it's worse.  A few more minutes of struggle and then you just cut the string off and re-tie it which is really what you should have done in the first place.
     Why do we get side-tracked?  Is it because we are soooo interested in what is going to happen next in the Scooby Doo episode that is on?  Or because we have tons of extra time to look for the missing Yoda slipper?  Or maybe we get side-tracked because there's nothing a mom loves more than to fish out letter magnets under the fridge.  And then when you fish out the letter magnets under the fridge, you realize that it's extremely dusty under there and you really should vacuum.  Which leads you to notice that the bagless vacuum cleaner canister needs to be emptied... and then cleaned out of course because the vacuum cleaner is getting dirty (holy oxymoron).  There's always the imperative side-tracking such as sewing Boyscout patches onto sleeves; thus spending an unaccounted for 2 hours on sewing a patch because your son spent 30 minutes tying knots and earned a badge.  And why do so many of these side-tracking tasks involve untangling (laces, kite strings, random twine, you name it!)?  You think you have plans for the evening and BAM! You find yourself in a homework quagmire or reading the directions on a messy science experiment and then cleaning up after the messy science experiment while the kids are nowhere to be found. 
     Perhaps it is just me.  Perhaps I am just not focused enough.  I mean, I was able to get out the door only about 30 minutes later than planned.  Huh- this might be why I'm always late.  But that's off topic, I was able to get out to the party dressed and ready to go. And untangling the Yo-Yo only cost me a little bit of prep time.  So I didn't have time to paint my nails.  On a positive note, in a week or so, I won't have to get side-tracked again by realizing that my nail polish is peeling and that I need to forsake my laundry duties in order to get the nail polish remover to take it off.  Which would then remind me that I need to clean all of my rings and other jewelry with the silver cleaner that is located next to the nail polish remover and then that I need to sort it all and neaten up my jewelry box because it's not like I have anything better to do.  Hmmm... priorities.