It’s universally known that most moms don’t get a “day off” from parenting, no matter how hard they try. In general, even when mothers and children are working at school, their minds are running a mile a minute with the grueling mental burden and invisible work that comes with having children.
However, once in a blue moon, the mother may have a day or evening just to reconnect with herself and have a dreadful break. One mother’s attempt to get a “day off” from being a mother is quickly compromised by a combination of her husband’s utter incompetence and perhaps some bad luck too.
Katrina Grillo, aka @katrinagrillo, posted on TikTok where she vented about how she had a “day off” from being a mom after her husband became responsible for their two kids.
“So today is supposed to be my day off from parenting. I’m supposed to have a full day to myself to do whatever I want,” Grillo begins. “This morning, I took myself to breakfast. I have a spa appointment this afternoon.”
After her nice morning on her own, she said she went home to pick up a few things before enjoying the rest of her day. Her husband was at home with their children – a four-year-old and a one-year-old.
Within minutes, she realized her one-year-old son had taken some medicine on her husband’s watch. True. she She comes home from her “day off” and finds out that her son is in serious trouble, not her husband, who was supposed to take care of the kids on his own for the day.
“In the five minutes I’ve been home, I’ve seen my one-year-old daughter come into the linen closet and put in a bowl of Vicks VapoRub,” she says with an exasperation in her voice. “We had no idea if he ate any or how much.”
Despite this mishap, Grillo still decides she’s going to enjoy an afternoon at the spa and packs her things to leave, once again putting the homework in Dad’s hands.
“I told my husband to call his pediatrician… They told him to call Poison Control, and after I left the house, he called me and said Poison Control told him to take [their son] Straight to the emergency room,” she explains.
She offered him help, asking if she should go home to help. He refuses to help her. That is, even calling her repeatedly.
“Two minutes later, he called me to tell me the four-year-old had banned him from the house,” she says. You can hear exhaustion in her voice.
Needless to say, other TikTok users had thoughts for Grillo about this depressing story that centered around her husband being unable to babysit for just a few hours. One user asked why the parent is there Not The default parent just can’t seem to get the job done. “Why is it so common for the other parent… not to be a parent either?” they asked.
Others showed sympathy for Grillo and the fact that her “day off” was a complete bust, but reminded her that she still needed time to herself. “You deserve a day. Take 10. Not this day. Don’t give it to him *on this* day and say he ain’t cut it out.”
One user suggested, “Keep trying until he figures it out.”
Others had less sympathetic ways of dealing with their husband’s incompetence. “Divorce :)” one TikTok user wrote in the comments — which also happened to have the most “likes” of any other comment on the video.
After garnering a notable amount of traction from her first video — which has more than 880,000 views and more than 114,000 likes — Grillo posted an update.
“First of all, a one-year-old is absolutely fine,” she begins.
After it was deemed safe to go home after some observations in the emergency room, Grillo’s husband took their son home so that Grillo could finally enjoy her “day off.” “
“I went out for the rest of my day because if my husband was gone all day, you know he usually goes snowboarding for the whole day, and he wouldn’t drive the 2-3 hours home…so I wasn’t going to stop my day either,” she explains. “It was a really great day, and everyone was fine.”
When she asked her husband why the one-year-old had a chance to run into the cupboard to grab a VapoRub, he told her he assumed everything was fine because the baby was “quiet.”
Of course, any mom knows that when the kids are quiet, that’s the time for that bone Worried that they are getting into something they shouldn’t be.
Once again, Grillo’s comments section was flooded with users who couldn’t believe she was putting up with marriage but are basically working as a single dad.
“I was going to lose him. I had these same issues with my husband. I looked at him and one user said we can get a divorce if I’m going to be a single parent.”
Let’s just hope this is a learning experience for Mom and Dad who will actually get another (uninterrupted) day without emergency trips or panicked phone calls from her husband.