A day in my
life could either be so boring and ordinary that it would make a chess match
look like a high intensity blood sport or so completely chaotic that I am on
the edge of a meltdown. Today was a meltdown kind of day. Right out of the gate
this morning the universe was out to get me. I survived melt down free but it
was touch and go there for a while, let me explain.
I slept great
and thought I would wake up to a glorious Sunday morning. I became quickly
aware that was not in my morning forecast because at 4:45 a.m. My baby got up and
decided that his morning had started and so therefore my morning was going to
start too. I disagreed with my baby and did every trick in the “Please Baby
Give Me Just One More Hour of Sleep” handbook. We walked, we sang, we rocked
and finally he gave in. After a bottle and some dry pants he was back out and
so was I. Good right? Well unfortunately I failed to remember that I had unset
the alarm when I got up. I over slept. So I picked up my morning pace and managed
to catch up with the things I needed to do, I was back on track. Then there was
a setback. My six year old son comes in looking like a deer in headlights and
tells me there is something wrong with my toilet. Two words I never want to
hear in the same sentence again are Wrong and Toilet. I did a mental head slap and
went to investigate. It turns out that an entire new roll of toilet paper had
fallen into the toilet and had sucked up most of the water. So there I was at
7:30 in the morning digging a half dissolved roll of toilet paper out of the
toilet with the end of the plunger. I even had an audience of two kids behind
me making gagging noises and adding helpful advice like “just use your hands it’s
faster.” Boy what a way to start the day, playing in the toilet before 8 a.m. After
the toilet was back in working condition and I disinfected myself from head to
toe I decided to cut breakfast fruit for church. After I got all the fruit cut and
put in a fancy carrying dish I had my son take it to the van. He comes in from
outside a few minutes later in tears and explains he dropped the fruit and now
it’s on the driveway. So there was another mental head slap and lots of
consoling for my son who unjustly blamed himself. I go outside to find that
half the fruit is actually still savable the container landed upright so only
the fruit that fell out midair was bad. Win. I brought the dish in, cleaned off
the bottom and put the remaining fruits neatly back in their own compartments.
Then I set it on the table. Approximately 30 seconds later my baby decided he
didn't want the fruit on the table any longer and pulled it down on himself. He
covered himself in fruit juice and I lost more or my precious church fruit.
After a quick bath for the baby, a lightning fast floor mop of the floor and
some new additions to the fruit tray from my personal stash we got out the
door.
We didn’t make
it very far. When I got to the van I found the automatic sliding door was on the
fritz. You see the door will stop
closing itself if it senses an obstacle in the way. It’s a great safety feature
that I used to love. I say used to because now the sensor seems to think there
is an obstacle in the path of the door and there isn't. This causes two
problems 1. The door won’t close and 2. It makes a terrible dinging noise. It’s
about 3 dings a second. Do that in your head it’s maddening. I had no time to
mess with it so I put it in manual and slammed it closed. This has taken care
of the door being open problem and only seems to have angered the dinging. By
now I’m very late so I turned up the DVD for the kids to stifle the ding and we
took off.I made it to church and while I was printing my morning papers I was
thinking maybe finally I will get some peace now that I am in my beloved church.
No such luck I ran out of copy paper. By now even mental head slaps are hurting so I
went with an eye roll. I loaded everyone back up in the dinging van and we set
out for Wal-Mart. I got to the store grabbed the copy paper, quick and
painless. I got to the checkout, with no waiting. I went to pay and realized, I
had forgotten my wallet at home. We all got back in the van and drove home. I
grabbed the wallet from the house, jumped over the fruit in the driveway, back
into the dinging van and sped off to get my copy paper. I got back to
church with copy paper in tow and thankfully the whole time I was at church it was nothing but lovely.
It was like burn cream on my third degree morning. It helped that they had
coffee and lots of it. Did I mention that through all of this first part of the
adventure I hadn't had one cup of coffee yet? I drank my coffee at church and
life was good again for a little while anyway.
After I was
done visiting at church I loaded the kids up in the van, I had forgotten about
the ding until I turned the van on, lovely. By now I'm crazy enough that I'm
justifying the ding. The van is dinging because she really cares about the
safety of her family. She apparently doesn't care at all about my mental state
but she is very concerned that there is an obstacle in the path of the door. My
Van needs a Valium it worries too much. "There’s no obstacle! Relax and
just be quiet van. We are all safe and the door is closed!" Yes, yes I did
actually say this out loud to my van. Are you getting a mental picture? I was
losing my marbles a little by now. So we got home and the baby went down for a
nap so I decide now was the time to investigate the door problem. I monkeyed
around with everything I could think of. I Googled ways other people had made
the ding stop, I cleaned tracks, I lubricated prongs, I used CLR on the
contacts I tried everything within my capabilities. In my efforts I managed to
accidentally flip the lock down. No big deal, just flip it back up and pull on
the handle right? Not so much. It was stuck. Genuinely, not going to budge
stuck. So now I can’t close the door manually or automatically and there is
rain on its way. Of course there was rain coming. Why wouldn't there be rain
coming with my door is wide open? I made some phone calls to the men in my life
hoping they had tools I could use. My tool kit is usually a high heeled shoe and a butter
knife and neither of these things were helping me at the moment. Just when I
had gotten my dad to come help the darn thing let go and I was able to close my
door. It was really a “Gotcha!” from the universe, but at least the door was
closed before it rained. It still dings but it’s closed. It’s a small victory
but a victory none the less.
I got into the
house and was disappointing to see that the cleaning fairy hadn't shown up while
I was outside. I'm not surprised though I don't even know that magic would have
been able to clean my house in the state it was in. The good thing is that I
clean when I’m stressed out and my house is super clean now. The last time I
cleaned more than I did today I started vacuuming off my vacuum but I was 39
weeks pregnant and preparing for baby. In my cleaning/distressing frenzy I was filling the
bathtub up with water and put some bleach in the water to get some of the
stains off the bottom of the tub. I left it filling to go around the wall and
tell my son not to go near the water in the tub because it had bleach in it. I
walked back around the wall to find my daughter sitting in the water. This girl
hears water running in the tub while she is outside and she is naked before she
hits the door. She was stone cold asleep when I turned on that faucet and in
the 45 seconds it took me to go around the wall to talk to her brother she was
up outta bed, disrobed, and is in the tub. I don't even know if she was awake yet.
I've heard of sleep walking but sleep bathing? I panicked and ripped her from
the tub and took her to my bathroom where I give her a thorough cleaning. As a
mom I immediately jump to “Did you drink it, did you touch your eyes, and does
anything hurt?” I was moments away from dialing poison control when reality set
in and I actually looked at her face (which was bone dry) and realized she was
looking at me like a lunatic. She was fine. So
the good news is my daughter is about as germ free as she can possible be right
now, the bad news is I’m not sure my heart rate came down from attack level for
about 2 hours afterwards.
Now
finally, like crazy sprinkles on an insane sundae add into this equation a 10
1/2 month old baby who has teething induced diarrhea and a diaper rash to
match. There were lots of dirty diapers and tears. Poor baby,
he wanted to be held non-stop due to the teething and the sore bottom so he
followed me around all day crying and undoing all of the things I cleaned. I
think he was tailing me and making messes as pay back for not constantly carrying him. Every book I put on the book shelf he would take off.
Everything I set on the coffee table he would tear down. Every bit of dust I
swept into a pile he crawled right through the middle. Every dish in a low
cabinet had to be out of the floor. I didn't dare correct him either because
that was asking for a full-fledged, throw himself on the ground feet kicking,
arm flailing, temper tantrum, which actually makes perfect sense because in
total honesty that is exactly what I wanted to do yesterday too.
So tomorrow is a new day and in comparison to today it Has to be better. I will get my coffee first thing the morning, I will get my beautiful kids up for school and we will get into the dinging van and go to school and work. All will be right in the world and things are going to be better today, and if they aren’t then I will get sent home from work for throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of the floor and I will go home and take a nap. It's all about your perspective. I say, Win win.
