I Like Wine

It's a Tuesday...I'm seeing a trend here. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of crap (sometimes literally) that can get thrown at me in one day. Now, let me start this rant...er blog...with the disclaimer that yes, I know that no one in my immediate household is suffering from a severe illness, we have food in our bellies, a roof over our head, clothes on our backs...etc., etc. None of those very important facts are lost on me.

Today though, was so ridiculous, it was blog-worthy. A Murphy's day to go down in the annals of history. My day started with the usual blaring of multiple alarm clocks (I think we have 3 going in my bedroom alone right now...long story), rousing kids from slumber, feeding animals, feeding kids, packing backpacks...you get the picture. We hustle out to the clown car and as I suck down as much caffeine as I can, wishing that it would lift the fog from my head as fast as my defroster does to my windshield, Charlotte announces, "Mom, I have mud all over the back of my pants." This seems like it's very possible considering the almost foot of snow that we had merely 2 days ago, that was washed away by rain, coupled with Charlotte's amazing gracefulness. Mud, OK, we can handle mud. How much mud are we talking about here? I ask Jason to look to the backseat to assess the situation as I navigate the winding road down the mountain. He determines that it's enough mud to freak me out. Excellent, I'll deal with it when I reach her school which is almost 20 miles away. Maybe by then the mud will have dried and I can just brush it off. About 15 minutes later...."Mom, maybe it's not mud." Not mud you say? If it's not mud, then what could it be? At this point I'm flying down Rte. 287 at about 75 mph trying to make up for the 15 mph-guy I was stuck behind on the Hamburg Tpk. 287 is pretty much a straight road so I crane my neck around to look at the specimen. That does not look like mud. That looks like dog poop that somehow made its' way all over the back of my 5 year-old's pants. Excellent! I begin to white-knuckle the steering wheel as my OCD kicks in and I have to fight the urge to turn my car around and dunk my daughter in bleach. Chanting in my mind, "It's going to be OK, it's going to be OK, it's effing going to be OK!", I drop the teenager off and race to the elementary school where I can fully evaluate and deal with the situation. Charlotte at this point has begun to whimper out a string of apologies and I know it must be bad. As I open the door to my van, the 7 year-old announces that I forgot to remind him to bring his violin and am an irresponsible adult (or at least that's what I heard.) Get out of my car and go to your classroom... The silver lining in this is that the violin case was spared the dog poop bath that everything else in my van got. Now, I don't understand how this is physically possible, but my daughter managed to get doggy doo on her pants, the rug, the car seat, the booster seat, various books and toys that had fallen on the floor,and the back of my car seat. I'm sorry but (insert expletive)??!!! How do two little feet move that much and cover so much ground? I muttered all too loudly in the parking lock of my children's Christian school that we cannot afford and are just waiting for them to kick us out, "DAMMIT!" OK, breathe. Fast-forward to grubbing a change of clothes from the Kindergarten cubby, scrubbing two backpacks with cleaning solution, cleaning the faculty bathroom floor, and taking my car to my inlaw's so I could clean the mess and dispose of a garbage bag full of toys and books, and it's not even 8:30am yet!

OK, I can and will salvage this day. I'm off of work this week, let's go for a hike. I drove to Ramapo Reservation, put my ipod on a genious mix and had an amazing, refreshing hike. You see? I can take lemons, make lemonade and sell that lemonade and make a profit!

I pick up the pooper trooper and head to a friend's for lunch before dancing school. We have a lovely lunch. It's parent's observation day today at dance and I get to see the clumsy, poop-spreading imp totally redeem herself as the cutest little ballerina ever. I get to giggle as I watch her feeble attempts at tucking in her tush while she pliets. Of course, I have to leave a 1/2 hr. early to see my twins participate in their wax museum at school, so blow a kiss to Swan Lake and run to the Middle School. I walk in to a child being carried out because he fainted during his presentation. Wow, someone is having a bad day, but it's not me! I professionally execute the act of spreading myself thin, tell my daughters what a wonderful job they did and fly back to the elementary school to pick up the 7 year-old and reunite with Princess tutu.

Princess Tutu is playing on the playground. Princess Tutu falls into the biggest mud puddle I have ever seen. I make Princess Tutu clean her hands in the pile of snow. At first it's because my brain cannot even fathom how we are going to handle a mess of this magnitude, and then I continue to tell her to do it out of spite. Thankfully I had washed the first set of pants ruined today and find myself back in that faculty bathroom. This time there's mulch and water involved. Undergarments are soaked, jackets, socks.....fingers are frost-bitten and tushies are getting pruny. I once again go to that Kindergarten cubby and take a pair of undergarments and strip my graceful ballerina. This time the faculty bathroom walls and sink need to be scrubbed. I laugh. This can only happen to me. Ha ha, he, he. Silly little life of mine. Enter eye twitch.

Gather younger kids, tell them that we aren't playing on the playground until the next drought so don't even ask, and fly over to the high school to pick up the teenager. Sit in parking lot for 20 minutes texting feverishly, "We're here....Where are you?" Find out that he has play practice and will be done at 5pm. Excellent! I haven't been home since 7:20am, let's go to Grandma's! Run there, run out to get the twins from tutoring. Drop one twin off at dance, she falls. I laugh. Maybe I'm starting to snap at this point. Drop other twin at Grandma's, realize 7 year-old who I left doing homework is on the same page and has now doodled all over said page. Correct his errors, make him erase doodles, and get text from teenager that practice will run past 5. No problem, now I can breathe for a second. Get text 2 seconds later, nope 5 it is. OK, run out. Make left into the high school parking lot, "Mom, don't hate me. Practice is till 5:30" Excellent. Sit in car with engine off, freeze my arse off and wait. Pick up teenager, barely speak to him, drop him off at Grandma's and head to see the middle schooler dance. Sit through that for 1/2 hr. then run to pick up other middle schooler so that we can go to Christian girlscouts where I am in charge of even more children. Albeit, most of them are other people's children.

My day is almost done, it's a craft night, so all I have to do is help a bunch of pre-pubescent girls stick seed beads onto 65 safety pins. I find a sick satisfaction when they complain of pricking their fingers as they bead the pins. Instead of laughing at them, I use this as a teachable moment, "Good things come through hard work girls. Just think how proud you can be of yourselves when your craft is done!" Girls grumble curses (Christian curses of course) under their breaths. Walk over to my daughters' table and hear my sweet, sweet little girl telling the entire 5th grade about how her mother had her brother before she was married. Now, this isn't a skeleton in my closet per se, but not exactly something you want the 5th grade girls in your Christian girlscouts group to know about you. I can imagine the conversations at their homes tonight, "Did YOU KNOW that Mrs. Van Goor had a baby out of WEDLOCK?!!" Or whatever 5th graders can take away from this excellent bit of information. It's at this point that I text my husband and inform him that I don't want to see a child for at least 10 hrs. straight from the moment I walk in the door tonight.

As I write this, I'm about 2/3's of a way through a very full glass of Merlot that my husband poured from me the moment that I entered the door (he's a smart man). I wish that I had a positive little spin to tie this story up with. You know, something about silver linings, or that stupid lemonade analogy. I don't. I do know, however, that in the grand scheme of life, this is the small stuff. They say, don't sweat the small stuff. So what do you do when there's so much small stuff it drowns you like a tick trapped in a box full of packing peanuts? Well, you can pray. You can breathe deeply. You can count your blessings. You can pour your heart out to someone. You can ask your husband to pour you a glass of wine. You can go to bed knowing that today is not the worst day you will have, but it's definitely not the best day. It's OK to say that today just sucked. I'm going to go with that. Today sucked, tomorrow is a new day, and I like wine.