- 5:15 a.m. - Cat decides to crawl under the covers to get warm but gets distracted by my feet and decides to attack. It wasn't pretty. Attack cat trapped under the covers with my feet. Instinct tells me to move my feet and get them out of the way. The cat's instincts obviously tell her to attack whatever is moving. It took me way too long to untuck the covers and kick (oh, I mean lovingly nudge) the cat from under the covers! I decided to go ahead and get up.
- 6:15 I got everyone ready to go. I had a Martha Stewart moment last night and threw some stuff in the crock-pot for breakfast so I really thought I'd covered every base possible that could become a potential hazard this morning. I got the girls into the car with their breakfasts but Grant streaked back in the house moaning and fussing. Perfect. I thought he was having intestinal issues but he had just realized that he'd forgotten to grab his supplies for band including a $40 mouthpiece. After a few moments, I went back inside after him. (Yep, I left both girls unattended in a running van. At that point, I should have realized that my sanity was already waning)! I ran upstairs and tried to help Grant find the mouthpiece to no avail. I believe my words to him were, "Oh well. I guess you'd better just take your punishment like a man!" Real loving, huh? I convinced him that we weren't going to spend any more time looking and needed to leave.
- 6:35 I pull into the sitter's drive way and unbuckle Annie. I'd bought her some new Play-Doh to "share" with the other kids and she was so excited that she insisted on carrying it. No! No! No! Big fail again! About three or four steps away from the van, she face planted onto the cement. If anyone had been sleeping in a two mile radius of the sitter's house, they were definitely rudely awakened! I handed her off to the sitter and fled the scene!
- 7:55 For some mysterious reason, I've lost all sense of time. Instead of taking my kids to gym today, I took them to art. Having to back track with a group of 30 kids eats up quite a bit of time so I was left with only moments of a planning period.
- 1:00 Office calls to let me know that Dasha is sick at school. She was coughing and threw up. I asked if she was well enough to stick it out until the end of the day. The nurse said she thought that it would be fine since she didn't have a fever.
- 1:45 Office calls again and asks me to call the middle school. Nice. Taking a phone call when you're in charge of 20 kids isn't that easy. I found someone to cover my class for me for a few minutes and returned the call. Ugh. Dasha had coughed so hard that she'd thrown up again AND wet her pants. (OK, this happens to me regularly even when I'm not sick so I couldn't be upset). I told the nurse that I'd head over to pick her up as soon as I released my students at 2:10. I got my things ready to go and headed out when the students left.
- 2:20 I'm stuck in car line and can't leave Little River. Because of where I park to get Dasha into the building, the car line snakes right behind the van and blocks me in. This isn't normally a problem but it sure was today. Crud.
- 2:45 I finally picked Dasha up, went to get Annie, and then headed back to wait in car line for Grant. Blah.
The contrast to my attitude pre-TP and post-TP made me realize what a curmudgeon I've been lately. I get so focused on everything that needs to get done that I lose sight of what I have and what I have gotten done. It's all relative and I just need to keep it in perspective.
The ending to my night came, though, as Annie read her books after I'd tucked her in and closed her door. She was reading a book with pictures of different babies who all are "messy." Some of the babies have food on their faces, others have paint, and one even has dirt. Then, the last few pages show the babies getting baths. I could hear Annie narrating the story and talking about the different pages over the monitor. Then, when she got to the "all clean" pages, she said, "My daddy gives me a bath. I needa tell him to come home so he can get me all clean." Ok, I managed to avoid having any sort of real emotional hiccup and kept working on cleaning up the kitchen. But, she kept reading. A few moments later, she said, "I just don't know where daddy is. He's not in the 'puter. He's not in the phone. He's in Texas. He come get me and get me clean and say I wuv you monkey." Crap. Crap. Crap. Why is life through a child's eyes always so different? It's so easy, as an adult, to get callused to routines and life in general but children just have tender hearts that don't scab over like ours. At that point, I did go back upstairs and rock her for a while. She didn't say anything else about daddy but my heart just aches wondering what her little mind is thinking about.
So, I'm heading to bed with a heavy heart but a bathroom full of TP! I've drugged Dasha with cough medicine in hopes that she'll sleep soundly and feel better in the morning. I guess I'll have to leave her with Annie's sitter tomorrow if she doesn't feel like going to school. I don't have any sick days to "blow" and since she's not running a fever, she could just watch TV and lounge. I absoutely hate to do that but that is now part of "normal" around here.
Good night, all.
(Oh yeah, Grant didn't have band today AND he found his mouthpiece under his bed. Pointless drama)!
And, after doing a quick proof-read, I realize that I changed tenses about fifty times. Sorry! I don't have energy to fix it but I think you can follow the crumb trail I left.
