Have you ever walked the Walk of Shame?

As a college gal, it meant wearing home the clothes you went out in the night before. The short dress that looked ideal for dancing at 10:00 pm suddenly seems garish in the morning light. The smokey bedroom  eyes previously slaved over are at best wiped away with a handful of tissue, and at worst, streaked down the cheeks. And the hair carefully styled before, now a matted mess not at all reminiscent of the bedhead made so famous in Victoria Secret catalogs. But that was before marriage and kids. I now have a very different walk of shame. It is, however, no less humiliating.

My children are terrible sleepers. I have written of this before. Once asleep, they are okay but coaxing them into sleep is a full-time job. And please don't write in with your various sleep-training  methods that are fail-safe. Trust me, my children are code-breakers when it comes to outlasting sleep-training techniques. If there was a Survivor Island for this, my kids would win in a heartbeat.

But back to their poor sleeping patterns, I often fall asleep hanging off one bed or another while cuddling, back-scratching, etc. On a good night, I wake up and move to my bed. As I said, that is a good night. Not all nights are good nights. Some nights I wake in the morning still wearing my clothes from the day before. On a good morning, I rise and take a shower before starting the day. That's a good morning. But somedays, a bad night meets a bad morning.

This results in the Mommy Walk of Shame.

The other day, I awoke in my daughter's bed. It was a miracle that I woke up at all as I had gone to her bed without my phone which is my alarm clock. And I am the alarm clock for the family. So I woke at 7:05. Can we say "Aack"? Actually, I did not say "aack" but I am sparing you the actual @#* worthy text.

I ran around waking everyone. I threw clothes at children, coffee at husband who had equally overslept for work (well, I handed him coffee -- throwing would not have helped the situation), and lunches into bags. I tied shoes, put on jackets, and shepherded children into the car. You may have noticed that not included on the list are: showered, brushed hair, or even brushed teeth. Nope, I drove the school in yesterday's clothes, now slept in, and yesterdays' bun, now half down the side of my head. No worries, though, I'll do drop-off.

Except, Little Diva doesn't want drop-off.

She wants Mommy to walk her to the door. Because I "never walk her to the door" -- the lack of accuracy in that statement is worthy of another post so I will save you those details -- and as we are moments before receiving a tardy, it did not seem the time to put down my foot and have a tantrum in the drop-off line. So I drove to the lot and parked. As they scrambled out of the back seat, I took a quick look in the mirror. Fortunately, there were no mascara streaks. I pulled down my hair from the bun and stepped out of the car. I then did the quick flip over and swept my hair back up into a quick top-knot. With a glance down to confirm that my clothes did not look like I lived on the street, I walked my daughter to her class.

I'll admit it. I thought I had pulled it off . I walked back to the car knowing that I hadn't looked perfectly coifed but feeling that I had managed drop-off successfully. Then my arm brushed something. I looked down to find a giant pizza stain across the side of my blouse.

Yep.

Not only had I walked my child to school in last night's clothes, I walked my child to school in yesterday's dinner. That's the Mommy Walk of Shame.

Have you ever walked a walk of shame?