
Ah, parenting.
It’s a labour of love, right?
We love those little cherubs – especially when they’re asleep.
We’d die for them – but we just don’t want to have to make them dinner every night.
I know you all hear me loud and clear. In your totally fried mind, within your utterly exhausted bodies, I know you agree with me that the emotional, physical, and financial (geez is that it? Only three?) sacrifices are (mostly) worth it for the joy and fulfilment our beloved offspring contribute to our lives (50 – 80 percent of the time).
That is why I need to tell you that there is hope, you guys. There is light at the end of the dark tunnel. (I am joking: sometimes the tunnel is lit by glow-in-the-dark slime because it gets everywhere.)
It started for me about three weeks ago, when I was at Woolies and my son, who’s 11-and-a-half, sent me this text message while he was in the library (20 metres away in the same complex, with a phone he has because he sees his dad separately, so please just focus on the positives here):

Before splitting up, we had casually talked about him getting himself a hot chocolate from the neighbouring cafe, but then I went to grocery store and thought nothing of it. So imagine my surprise when I got a text from my kid asking me "What coffee" I'd like.
I saw the text and started shaking with nervous excitement.
Dear God, is this actually happening?
Steadying my hand, I typed back "Skinny mocha please", and whilst I held my breath for his response, watching those three little dots, the magic happened.
"Cool," he wrote.
Within five minutes, he'd found me in Woolies, and was bearing a hot chocolate for himself, and a god damn skinny mocha for me.
To mark this momentous occasion, I took to Instagram immediately with a screenshot of the texts, and the caption: "The day has finally arrived - my kid on a coffee run. I so deserve this."
Top Comments
The best age is 18 when they can do bottle shop runs.
I reckon my mum was pretty happy when I was old enough to go down the shop for her smokes!
Yep, i used to do that for my Dad when I was about the same age, 11 or 12.
Man, it's a different world now eh?
I was a bit older, probably 16. We lived in a small town (pop. 300ish), so the shopkeeper knew the smokes were for my mum and dad - but he still put them in a brown paper bag so people didn’t think I was smoking! :)
So I'm detecting two recurring themes in this author's writing: 1) my kid is the best and 2) my ex-husband is a creep.