{"id":746,"date":"2026-03-18T21:27:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T21:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=746"},"modified":"2026-03-19T13:57:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:57:34","slug":"good-night-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=746","title":{"rendered":"Good Night, Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Every day:
She comes home from school
and plops her heavy backpack
and enormous Stanley 
and her sweaty ankle socks
and several precarious Sharpies
and her questionably damp 
yet on-trend and so chic
reusable lunch bag
onto our living room couch.

And every day I say:
\u201cCan you take your things 
off the couch?
And could you place them 
in the landing zone
that we built for your use.
And please, will you 
disarticulate your Stanley?
And pop it into the dishwasher.
And then please empty out
your lunch bag, why don\u2019t you.
So maybe, just possibly,
tomorrow morning will
go smoother?\u201d

And every day she 
S I G H S !
And retorts:
MOMIKNOW! 
MOMIMNOTABABY
MOMIKNOWHOWTODOTHINGS
CANYOULEAVEMEALONE!

And every night 
as I turn the corner
to ascend the stairs
to attempt some sleep,
I see from my peripheral:
Her heavy backpack
Her leaking Stanley
Her discarded socks
An uncapped Sharpie
and her drooping lunch bag.

All her detritus is 
nestled in 
for a long night's rest
on our custom sofa.

ThisIsWhy
WeCan\u2019tHave<\/em>
GoodThings.<\/em>
Good Night, Mess.
<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cGood Night, Mess,\u201d written March 18, an observation of predictable chaos. Poem 077 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. “School Day Paraphernalia,” Photo by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,200,2],"tags":[338,141,9,40,232,339,56,10,286,340,11,228],"class_list":["post-746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-humor","category-poems","tag-clutter","tag-habits","tag-humor","tag-kids","tag-march","tag-mess","tag-mother-daughter-dynamics","tag-parenting","tag-patterns","tag-predictable-chaos","tag-relationships","tag-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=746"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}