It's Groundhog Day

I’m a huge fan of the 1993 movie, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray mainly because I can relate to the main character, Phil Connors, who has to repeat a single day over and over again until he gets it right. He gets stuck in this day for years, continually screwing things up, while the universe hits the repeat button every time he fails. I can relate because it takes me multiple failures and multiple repeats to figure things out. Phil was stuck in Punxsutawney for years and I could easily have been stuck right there with him.


For example, I’ve been a mother for fourteen years and I still don’t have a working system for making sure chores are done and that my kids get paid for doing the work. We’ve tried everything. I’ve made dry-erase charts, charts with stickers, and charts that spin in order to track responsibilities and progress, but they all last about a week before I decide that it’s more work than it’s worth. I’ve purchased programs on infomercials promising me “accountable kids” that involved flip charts and weeks of micromanaging my children—a chore that I complain about. My son’s favorite tracking method was a paper chain that hung from his ceiling. When the chain reached the ground, then he earned a certain amount of money. The only problem is that we spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to work out how many links a chore was worth. My children obviously have a distorted sense of what work is worth in the real world since they think cleaning toilets should pay twenty bucks. At this point I just make my kids clean stuff and when they want to be paid I tell them that they’re being paid with a roof over their heads and DC shoes on their feet.

Phil Connors manages to learn piano, save everyone who would have died that day, make friends with every single person in the town, rob the bank, die and return for nine more lives and fall in love. I haven’t accomplished nearly that much. I still don’t balance my checkbook, organize my closets, or wash my car until someone draws messages in the dirty windows. I can’t cook Asian food and I send my daughter to school with unbrushed teeth and a minty piece of gum. But thankfully I don’t have to repeat days—that would just be depressing.