if my day job doesn't work out...

I can always consider becoming a sherpa. Why is it that the smaller the person, the more stuff you have to carry? Yesterday, when I picked up the girls from school, I found myself carrying:

• One set of car keys
  
• One cute 20+ pound toddler squirming to get down
  
• Two daycare issued lunch boxes
  
• One grocery bag filled with A's poop-covered clothing
  
• One grocery bag filled with E's pee-covered clothing from that day's accident
  
• Thirty-seven various art projects completed by E at school. (On a side note, what do you DO with all of them? I mean, I should probably keep a few around for the memories...but how do you determine which ones -- the crayon scribbled on construction paper or the macaroni and cotton balls glued to a paper plate?)

As we set out across the parking lot, E decides that she wanted to carry her own lunch box and she wanted to carry it right now. As it so happened, the strap to hers was wedged between A's heiny and my arm, which was also carrying the precariously stacked art projects. A's lunchbox, however, was easily accessible on the arm with the car keys and the grocery bags.

"Here, take this one," I say, offering her A's.

E took one look at the nametag and screamed, "No! I want MY lunchbox." And with that, she threw herself to the ground in protest.

After kicking myself for teaching her to read her name, I did what any other harried working mother of two would do...bent down, scooped her up and added one 30+ pound, kicking and screaming three-year-old to my load.

So after carrying all that to the car, I'm pretty sure with a yak and a pair of snowshoes, Everest would be a piece of cake.